Demonstar
by Dioxine
Summary: Adult fantasy: adventure, supernatural, erotic. Will Tsukasa be able to save her sister from a terrible fate? Well that might be pretty obvious, but getting there will be a hell of experience. Literally.
1. The Mirror

I've edited the chapter one and rooted out some of the more outstanding mistakes to upgrade it to the level of the other chapters... Should be easier to read now. No changes in the story were made, rest assured :)

* * *

The day was still young. The sun didn't yet climb more than a half way up the cloudless sky, yet the heat already began to build up, drying up Tsukasa's skin almost as quickly as the lazy waves made it wet. The sand was warm and soft. The overall gentle sensation was so overpowering, that she had fallen asleep before she realized she was no longer sleeping.

She awoke with a start, and pulled her body up, shielding her eyes from the blinding sun.

„What? Did I oversleep again? So much light! It must be noon already-"

Tsukasa's train of thoughts was stopped in its tracks in a split-second. She was not in bed. Before her eyes laid a vast expanse of azure water, which covered more than a half of the horizon, blending in the distance with the pale blue sky. High sun cast myriads of silver specks upon the gentle waves.

„I felt asleep on a beach... Trouble, trouble..."

Fighting panic, she looked upon herself, searching for dreaded sunburns. She found none, but that was not the most surprising thing. A wet and ragged summer dress barely covered her body. It was torn so badly that the yellow bikini she wore under it was very much visible. Thankfully the bikini itself was whole, if that could be said about something so small. That itself was not a problem, as her body of a twenty years old girl was tan and fit... maybe even a bit more fit than she thought she was... Must be the summer diet and swimming... But, a torn dress? What happened?

It was then that Tsukasa realised that her senses were assaulted by cacophony of unfamiliar sounds and scents. She looked around, trying to keep her loose hair from obscuring her eyes. The beach looked rather short, running maybe a kilometer in each side, as if she were on an peninsula. It was completely deserted. No one and nothing of human origin was to be seen on its surface, save from some flotsam. The beach was maybe thirty meters wide, and ended suddenly in a living wall of intensely green and very dense tropical forest, emanating with strange sounds and smells. It slowly dawned on her that she does not know this place, how she got here or why she was alone. It looked like the torn dress was the least of her problems. Even more surprisingly to the girl, her uneasiness, unpleasant as it was, didn't turn into a full-blown panic.

„I don't feel that bad... So there must be nothing to be afraid of... I just forgot where I am... Strange, but that could happen, couldn't it? I just have to find... to find... whom? I don't remember... Oh, no..."

Uneasiness increased.

„Oh no, it must be a sunstroke!"

Barefooted, Tsukasa wandered a couple hundred of meters in both directions. She tied her hair in the usual way, only this time she was forced to use a strap torn from the dress. No sign of human presence, no voice, nothing. Only some random items scattered across the beach, a bottle of shampoo here, a roll of drenched toilet paper there, and some broken wood everywhere. Tsukasa saw enough movies to start to suspect she was a survivor of a ship crash. That was really scary. A lone survivor, doomed to die on an remote island. And sunstruck!

Another pair of tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. And yet... Tsukasa still seemed to be unable to feel as bad about it as she should. Maybe it was the strange, overwhelming beauty of this place... Maybe the pleasant sensation of sunrays on her skin... Or maybe she had more resolve than she thought. Her body felt strong, and the forest looked rather bountiful and inviting, even if scary.

The inside of the forest was shady and moist, cooling Tsukasa's exposed skin. She had already completely shed her dress. It was useless as clothing, constrained movement and better used as a bag for the things she found on the beach. The girl was still scared of starvation, yet she found out that she was able to break coconuts with a stone and eat what was inside. It was almost like eating cake, and coconuts were abundant here. As well as other kinds of fruit, most of which she knew were edible.

„It is still hopeless, of course. I am alone, I will die here", she said, as to convince herself. Yet... She felt so alive. Little creatures and birds scurried everywhere in the thick foliage. Flowers and fruit of wild, vivid colours spurted here and there from the greenest green she had ever saw. It was paradise.

Tsukasa outstretched her hands and curiously moved forward. Big, heavy leaves caressed her skin as she went. She was lost before she knew it.

The small clearing was full of the largest and most beautiful flowers she had seen yet. Heavy, sweet scent hung in the air. Stunned by this new wonder, Tsukasa yet again forgot about her dire situation. With a trembling hand, she took a flower. It was red and black, large as her head, and tied to a thick, thorny vine. The smell was overwhelming... and yet, strangely enough, while she was stunned, she also felt some uneasiness. The girl ignored that after a second thought. The attraction was so intense, and how a flower could be dangerous? She knelt and stuck her nose inside. It was as if her senses were on fire.

„Oh... my..."

Before she realized it, she pressed the flower against her skin, her cheek, her neck... her breasts and abdomen. She wanted nothing more than feel the scent even more, to imprint it on her skin, to experience this insane sensation even more. Even her small bikini seemed now like a constraining barrier between her and the full embrace of the flower. Her head swam.

Some alarm bell rung in her mind. Not from some usual source, but from deep within, as if it was an instinct. Tsukasa had always trusted her instincts, and that didn't change now. She played with the flower a little more, then reluctantly got up. Something was not quite right with this place. Tsukasa wasn't scared, but decided that she didn't want to stay here. This beautiful place had some dark aura about it. She didn't want to leave either, but her curiosity about the rest of the forest prevailed in the end. Still wearing the heavy scent of the mysterious flower, the girl headed out.

When she finally stopped again by a small stream that ran through the undergrowth, she was starting to regret her visit in the forest. Not only because she was lost. „No longer denying it... I'm not feeling very well..."

Tsukasa's torso was blushed red, like her hands. She had no delusions about her face, either. During the previous hour of her aimless wander, the delicate itching on the girl's skin slowly turned into severe inflammation. Her face burned. The forest which surrounded the rocky bedrock of the stream turned darker. Sounds and colours seemed to be more and more distorted. The voices of the birds were no longer inspiring, they drilled through Tsukasa's swollen head like growls of a powered tool.

She tried to cool her inflammated skin in the stream, but to no avail. She knew that she was sick. Very sick, and there was nobody to help her.

„It hurts... Please, someone... Mom... Kagami... Minoru... Someone be here..."

Tears of self pity started to flow from her eyes. Perhaps she should just lie down and die. Perhaps...

A strange sight caught her eye. In a rock basin under a small waterfall, there was a strange creature, partially submerged. It was a turtle, probably the biggest turtle Tsukasa ever saw. She quickly dried her eyes to see better. The reptile was gray and green. Its head was as big as Tsukasa's, armoured and topped with two short but very thick, triangular horns. The head fitted seamlessly into its massive, flat carapace, two meters long and almost as wide. The creature also had quite a long tail, which lazy swings were the only sign that the turtle was alive.

As Tsukasa watched it – or him, she for some reason was sure that it was male – in awe, the creature suddenly swiveled its stubby head in her direction. Their eyes locked. The girl gasped.

„Uhm... hello, Mr. Kame..."

The turtle didn't blink. Seconds passed. Tsukasa started to sweat.

„Eee... Sorry to disturb you... Is it your home?"

What was she doing, talking to a turtle? Suddenly it rose on all fours and seemed much bigger and scarier. Tsukasa's eyes widened in startle.

„Sorry! I was just leaving!"

The creature turned in her direction. That was too much. Without any of the grace or strength she had in the morning, Tsukasa stumbled and almost fell while turning away. She braced herself against a tree and started to move. Her wonder replaced now by fear, the girl realized that she was feeling real bad. Her stride was uneven, shaky, sense of balance failing her.

Tsukasa looked back. Surely, the creature was following her! What for, she didn't know, and wasn't interested in finding out, either. Yet, she was growing weak with every step, and the turtle moved surprisingly fast for his size.

The dizziness finally overcame her. Tsukasa fell down into the water. With a moan of pain, she pulled her unresponsive body up and sat against a tree, her legs still in the water. Up until now she managed to put some distance between her and the creature, but now it approached steadily and purposefully, while she couldn't move anymore. Her skin burned. Her senses gave erratic input. Her thoughts were in a state of chaos.

Tsukasa opened her eyes in time to notice a big, horned, green head between her legs. The turtle was sniffing her patiently. She managed to raise her hand and put it on creatures head.

„Do you want to eat me, Mr. Kame? I'm almost dead already, so... I guess it won't bother me... Just make it, ehm, painless, would you...?" She tried to smile.

The turtle turned his head towards her hand. He protruded a thick, slimy tongue from his mouth and started to lick it. Now Tsukasa was sure – he was going to eat her. Girls' eyes turned very watery.

„Uhm... Am I tasty, Mr. Kame?"

Unsurprisingly, the turtle didn't answer. He kept on licking. His saliva was cool. His eyes were orange and strangely intelligent. Then, he lowered his head and started to tongue Tsukasa's belly.

„Oh! That tickles... No! Heehee!"

Despite the perspective of being disemboweled shortly, the girl couldn't stop giggling weakly. Her mind must have been playing tricks on her, for she noticed all too familiar scent of balsamic vinegar in the air. It must have been coming from the turtle, but how?

Suddenly, the creature rushed forward. Tsukasa fell on her back. Heavy load of at least two hundred kilograms pressed her thighs and hips into the mud. Most embarrassingly, the turtle started to lick her neck and torso.

„Sure you're heavy, Mr. Kame... Do you always play with the food so much?"

Even as Tsukasa was saying that, she noticed two things. First, the smell of vinegar was now overwhelming. Second, skin on her hand and stomach was no longer burning, and felt very cool and fresh instead. Was it possible, that the turtle's saliva was there to preserve her body until he was hungry?

Creature's head sprang backward. He turned his attention towards her breasts now. Tsukasa shivered under the tongue and gulped. Suddenly, the turtle opened his mouth, presenting flat but impressive teeth and closed it between her breasts, not even nicking her skin, but grabbing her bra instead. He started to tear, shaking his head violently.

"Oiii! No! Please, let go of me! Don't do tha... ahhh..."

Tsukasa's protests died out, as the upper half of her outfit was shredded and eaten thoroughly. Her exposed upper body was overwhelmed with a feeling of pleasant coolness and unimaginable relief, freed from the venom-soaked fabric.

The girl laid motionlessly, eyes wide open, as Mr. Kame thoroughly licked her breasts, shoulders and face. Wherever his saliva went, the inflammation receded. Embarrassed as she was, she was grateful for this bizarre remedy. She decided it was, in a way, just like a visit to the local clinic back in their neighborhood, which allowed her to relax a bit more. She wasn't afraid at all now; actually, she didn't even feel all that awkward.

Many minutes passed until Tsukasa finally sat upright. She didn't feel sick anymore, and all the inflammation she had now came from her blushing cheeks. She felt her strength returning. She also felt strangely excited, a mixture of immense relief, curiosity, and perhaps a shade of regret that the healing process had already ended.

The turtle was waiting patiently nearby all the time. Now, he turned away and started to walk. He stopped after several steps and looked back.

"You want me... to follow you?"

Catiously, she stood up. No disorientation, no weakness in knees. She could walk normally now. Seeing her getting up, the turtle continued downstream. Tsukasa readjusted the ribbon holding her lavender hair. What choice she had?

„You saved my life, Mr. Kame, didn't you? It were those flowers, weren't they? Where are we going?"

The turtle didn't answer. Not in words, anyway.

Tsukasa was sitting on the beach, arms backwards, legs outstretched. She tried to gather her thoughts. The caresses of sunlight upon her skin were not helping. A feeling of relaxation filled her. Thanks to Mr. Kame's treatment, she avoided death, and even the loss of her bra was not so awful, at least for now. She heard that sunbathing topless was something pretty normal in some countries, yet she never did it before. It felt good to be not constrained. Plus, as a precaution if she was spotted by anyone, she had a large palm leaf within easy reach.

„It's almost like an outdoor bath. Maybe I should remove the panties as well?"

She fought that urge. Somehow, that would be a bit too indecent. It wasn't really a bath.

„Oh, the weather is so fine, Mr. Kame..."

Tsukasa slowly lifted her right leg in the air, without bending her knee. She was surprised how easily she was able to touch her nose with it.

„I am pretty sure I could never do that before... So strange."

The girl looked upon herself. She was almost sure that she never was that strong. Her body was as feminine as always, with smooth curves and round breasts, but the muscles were clearly defined. She took a stone and made a throw, trying to use all her strength. It looked very small when it finally splashed into water.

The turtle looked at Tsukasa curiously. She smiled, then sighed.

„I had a strange dream, Mr. Kame. I was old... very old, and I was Minoru's wife. Funny, I do like him, but... Wait, no. I remember wedding him. Or was it a part of the dream? Anyway, I had children, and grandchildren. We were a really happy family. Is it a sign of good fortune? I hope so..."

She smiled dreamingly.

„Yet, Mr. Kame, I do not remember how I got here. Hmm, maybe I'm on a holiday trip with my mates from the college... And they are looking for me... Or honeymoon with Minoru... Did I marry him or not?"

She looked genuinely puzzled. It took a moment, before she continued.

„Or... they could be in trouble... If there was a ship crash... They could be dead! Oh no. It's really... really scary."

Tsukasa grabbed her knees and curled into a foetal position.

„I can't bear it... What would Kagami do?"

She was on the verge of crying again. Then a wet and cold thing touched her shin. The turtle was there, holding a dead fish in his jaws.

„I guess it cannot be helped. No point in starving to death. But, how are we going to cook it?"

Mr. Kame certainly wasn't a normal animal. It turned out he can secrete not only vinegar from his mouth, but also alcohol. And he showed Tsukasa to use flint as a means to create fire. Before long, the girl was able to make an acceptable fish soup, using a pot salvaged from the flotsam and some ingredients she found in the jungle. Later, they swam and played in the crystal clear waters of the lagoon. The turtle was really fast underwater, yet the girl was very agile as well. She even managed to catch one fish, and made one more pot of soup when they were back on shore. As Tsukasa laid on the comfortably hot turtle's carapace, she thought that if her situation wasn't so dire, it could be one of the best times in her life. Facing the reality could wait a moment.

Tsukasa opened her eyes suddenly when she had fallen off the turtle. She was still on the beach, but the place was unfamiliar, and the sky already was crimson in colour. She was startled. Not a good idea to fall asleep on something that could move... Especially being half-nude and stranded in a strange land.

She stood up and cleaned the sand off front of her body. A massive rock caught her eye. It rose from the water about ten meters offshore, like a half submerged residential block. A cave entry was visible on the water line.

„A home for the night? You're really smart, Mr. Kame!"

She hugged the turtle and rushed to investigate.

The inside of the cave turned out to be a dark and curved tunnel. Tsukasa was wading through the water, which was chest deep here. It was starting to be really scary, even with Mr. Kame by her side. If only she had a flashlight...

„Uhm, maybe we should return? I can't see anything... What if something lives here?"

Mr. Kame prodded her forward. She would turn back if she weren't a little scared of him as well. Then the girl noticed a faint blueish light coming from the bowels of the cave.

Tsukasa cautiously emerged from the water. She was in a domed grotto, deep inside the rock. The bottom rose here, and about half of the grotto was dry. A few almost natural-looking steps were carved from the rock in the most elevated end. They led to the source of the feint light.

Leaving wet footprints, Tsukasa approached it slowly. She looked around, alerted. It felt like she was being watched... yet she didn't see anybody. The girl turned her attention to the strange object again. It looked like a glowing mirror, adorned with black metal gargoyles and evil demonic faces. She felt her heart pounding. Suddenly, she realized that the mirror was not reflecting anything... Something was moving inside it instead. Recognition flashed across Tsukasa's face.

„Sis!"

Undobtedly it was Kagami. Tsukasa's sister looked there like a woman in her twenties. She was wearing a white track suit, and was just entering her appartment.

„I remember! Your own home, sis. I was there... But..."

Tsukasa started to look horrified. She raised her clenched fists to her mouth.

„I remember... Oh no, I remember now..."

The girl, petrified, transfixed, watched scenes in the mirror. She didn't notice an alien gaze fixed on her exposed back.


	2. Death in Flames

Sorry to keep you waiting for so long! This chapter is short, but I decided to post it none the less, as it could take me another half a year to make it longer; what's more important, it's a logical closed sequence. Still no lemons I'm afraid, but we'll get there eventually :) With that out of the way, I can think about the next chapter at my leisure. Special thanks go to the few brave souls who reviewed this boring story :)

* * *

_Kagami, in her white tracksuit, entered her__ apartment__. Obviously not knowing what fate this day had prepared for her._

Yes, that sounded good. Kagami smiled bitterly. The sun, now setting, turned the inside of the vehicle into a furnace. Metaphoricaly speaking, of course. She raised a trembling hand and checked her pocket for the box of cigarettes. Last one in the box. Normally, that would be unfortunate.

"_What a lucky coincidence I've met you, after so many years! So that's how you live! Nice flat, Hiiragi. So you live alone? We singles sure have a hard time keeping house clean, don't we? But at least nobody is ruining our work."_

"_Thank you, miss Kuroi," she replied coldly, maybe because her former teacher sounded so insincere. Her sorry look she owed to the rain was far more fitting than her words. "You can use that big white towel."_

She lit the cigarette, inhaled, and coughed blood. This isn't going to be the best cigarette of her life. Her life… A funny thing. Shy and impulsive girl. Supposedly good-hearted. Honest to everyone… _Well, maybe not that honest_. Then, struggling and lonely. And that last thing… Almost funny.

_Nanako was sitting on the sofa, dressed in a white bath robe. "So, how it's going, in general?" she asked. Kagami shrugged. "Do you play games?" inquired Nanako further after a moment of awkwar__d silence. "Not really." Kuroi's blonde hair stuck to her head making her look like she ran through that rain just a minute ago. "Well, we shouldn't worry, we're still so young!" Her smile was…fake, yes, but also…so proud and desperate. And that made her tired face look more beautiful than any immortal goddess could hope for. Without thinking, Kagami reached forward and put her hand on Nanako's cheek. The older woman froze and looked directly into Kagami's eyes. There must have been something in those eyes, since when Kagami lowered herself and kissed her, Nanako didn't recoil immediately._

It was kind of sad there will be no next chapter to this story. Even if that will save her embarrassment. _Embarrassment! Hah!_ She chuckled again, but the driving wheel pressed against her chest made it a painful exercise. Like she could be in a more embarrassing position than she was now. _There's nothing more embarrassing than being a victim._

_Miss Kuroi returned to her senses after a few seconds. She pulled back violently. "Hiiragi… I didn't know you were… one of those…I'll better be off." __Her smile was as fake as the last, but nowhere as beautiful. Kagami stumbled backwards._

The smell of gasoline… it was getting really strong. Kagami looked sideways. _Oh, yes._ The gasoline was already mixing with a pool of her blood and viscera that spilled from her torn belly. It normally shouldn't happen, as the gas tank was in the back of the car. Now, however, it was positioned somewhere above Kagami's head. The car turned into a metal trap that eviscerated her, crushed both her legs and merged with her body to a point she wasn't sure it will be even possible to remove her from the wreckage in one piece.

The pain was getting weaker. Kagami noticed that her fingers turned very pale. The cigarette seemed really heavy. Yet all this was so clear, her hand, cigarette, the rocks, the broken barrier up on the highway. All so full of colour, so real, as if her life was trying to feed as much stimuli as possible until the fall of final nothingness. It almost felt good, even if a part of her was scared like hell.

_Well, no escape__ now. That was life. Some life_. She blushed, she dreamed, she was mad at people, she joked and loved her sister. Not much after that, just struggle. Struggle for nothing… for no one. At least now her loneliness was all right, since she was dying.

Cigarette almost finished. Now Kagami was starting to feel sleepy. Her body never claimed by no one, how funny was that? She even was sort of ready to give it to Kuroi Nanako. A woman. Her former teacher from the world lost in time. Even funnier. Even more pathetic. It seemed her body will only be claimed by the pathologists and funeral workers.

That was beyond funny. No, she couldn't allow it. That and Tsukasa and others seeing her broken, naked form. What remained? To reduce herself to something not being a human body anymore. _Death in flames?_ thought Kagami, lowering her cigarette towards the pool of gasoline. _How romantic._

The cramped inside of what was once a cute, small city car exploded into a blazing inferno. _So much light._ An image of her burning hand, unbearable pain, then darkness and more pain.

"_She didn't deserve to die that young." Minoru shook his head and put his arm around Tsukasa. She patted his hand, smiled sadly and said, "__Don't forget she was my twin sister. She lives in our children." They looked up at a stern-looking young woman with a cigarette and unkempt lavender hair. She indeed was looking a lot like Kagami. She even picked up her bad habits, like smoking and distrusting people. But they loved her as much as her older sisters and brothers._

Tsukasa now cried openly, looking at her older self in the strange mirror. Somehow she knew that she was seeing the truth, however impossible that could be. The images moved onwards, awakening more and more of her memories. She staggered and kneeled down. "No, no!" she screamed. "How could you all die! I'm not accepting this!" Her half-naked form shivered, and the heavy, warm tears were falling upon the rocks.

The mirror went on.


	3. The Snake Pit

More weirdness coming right up! I couldn't keep from updating for too long after what happened last, could I? Thanks to Solarius Scorch this time, who greatly helped me to increase the quality of this piece.

A friendly reminder: every time you read and enjoy a fanfic and don't review, god Khorne kills a small kitten :)

* * *

Snakes. Cold-eyed snakes slithering, writhing, flashing teeth in the moonlight that entered the room through the small window near the ceiling. Cold-skinned snakes biting her, filling her veins with burning poison, tearing her flesh and ripping away her high-school uniform.

She was screaming in pain and blind fear. "No! No! Let me go, please! Leave me alone!"

An answer came from some obscure, dark part of her brain._ You'll never be alone again. They'll keep you company for the rest of eternity._ She froze for a second when confronted with that alien, yet coherent and obvious truth, but the torture didn't stop.

She was lying on a circular altar but couldn't get away, couldn't move an inch as her wrists and ankles were cuffed to the stone with metal bands. She screamed, knowing that she couldn't bear it for long, yet she was going to suffer it for _eternity_.

Before the anguish made her squeeze her eyes tightly again, she briefly saw countless serpentine bodies crawling on the stone floor and swirling around the altar she was chained to. She also saw elongated shapes much closer to her eyes, moving back and forth like reversed pendulums and rythmically descending at her with cold malice. She kept thrashing around, but it didn't stop them from viciously attacking various parts of her trembling body, her legs, shoulders, breasts.

When a snake dived between her spread thighs an bit her through the underwear, something finally snapped in her. The fear gave way to fury so suddenly that she could only feel a brief moment of surprise and confusion before an animal rage overwhelmed her. She heard herself let out a primal, inhuman scream of defiance. Her bones started to disjoin and reform within her body, causing untold suffering. Her muscles tensed almost to the point of ripping apart, painfully stretching her burning, pale skin.

Screaming still, she started to bend her arms. The metal bands almost crushed her wrists but slowly gave in with a whine of tortured metal. They clattered, bouncing off the ceiling and walls.

She cut her scream as she sat upright. One of the larger snakes immediately went after her face, but she dodged the attack and her teeth found its neck. Her mouth filled with blood. She spat it out along with the dead reptile. She bended towards her legs and with further superhuman effort ripped apart the remaining cuffs. She jumped down from the altar. One snake immediately bit her in the ear. She tore it off together with a piece of her lobe and screamed in pain once more.

A red haze appeared before her eyes. She started to spit out incoherent curses, clawing around. In this very moment, a violent thunderclap shook the floor, and the room was alight with an electrical discharge. Dozens of snakes danced to its caresses, burned and withered away, their eyes exploding and blood bursting from between their scales. Smell of ozone and burning flesh assaulted her nostrils. She stumbled for a moment, dumbstruck. Still, there was nothing here but more and more snakes coming at her, too many to fight. The electrical explosion made some breathing space though. She saw her chance and sprinted, dripping blood.

In just two jumps she found herself on a top of a staircase and confronted a door that denied the further way. She reached for the knob and felt brief resistance before the knob was ripped out of the door along with the locking mechanism. She left through a cloud of splintered wood.

The corridor was old, dark and dirty. It wobbled briefly before her eyes before she violently and painfully collided with another door. The door broke in half, toppled and she staggered over it, outside, onto the street.

The view of the landscape and a gush of fresh air made her stop in her tracks._ Where the hell am I?_ she thought, as clarity started to find its way into her mind. The eerie moonlight illuminated a desolated street between two rows of shabby yet quite monumental, ten-story tenements. No street light seemed to work, there was no human or vehicle in sight. The full moon was huge, sitting just above jagged roofs. _No time for sightseeing. I need a place to hide_, she mitigated herself and broke into a sprint once more.

She ran several blocks down the street, then turned ninety degrees left, passed a few empty streets and turned right. She realized she was limping, but that was only because she had only one shoe. She discarded it and ran some more. Seeing that nobody is following her, she dived into one of tenements' doors, which turned out to be open.

A minute later, she was in an empty apartment and cautiously looking out through the window that overlooked the street. She stayed like that for some time, until her breath and pulse returned to normal. Still seeing no movement, she allowed herself to relax. It looked like she was safe… at least for now.

She let out a sigh of relief and looked around the room she was in. It looked like a living room, but was almost empty. No furniture, just shredded, dusty floor and some junk beside the walls – decayed shoes, wood splinters, rusted pots, broken glass. She decided to scout out the rest of the apartment. She stepped cautiously. She didn't want to make any noise in this eerie silence, or step onto something sharp with her bare foot. Her skin still itched from snake-bites.

She didn't find anything of interest in the whole three-room apartment, until she entered the small bathroom. She glanced briefly at the rusted bathtub and sink, until her eyes landed on a tall, dirty mirror beside the wall.

_Who the hell am I?_ She tilted her head a bit, looking at the bloodied woman in the mirror. Long, lavender ponytails hanged from both sides of her head, framing a dirty yet positively angular, good-looking face. She touched the hair with her hand and noticed that they seemed nice to the touch. She also noticed that her fingers ended in sharp, black fingernails. She looked herself into the face again. Her lips were black and the eyes red, which she found a little strange, but didn't know exactly why. Below her left eye she noticed a small, black tattoo depicting an upside-down star. Even more puzzling was a pair of little, black horns which protruded from her forehead just below the hair line. _I am not supposed to have those._ Yet they seemed so natural that she didn't dwell on this too much. She lowered her eyes. Her body looked rock-hard, muscled and well-developed, certainly too mature for that school uniform… but not by much. The shredded clothing barely covered her chest and hips, giving hints of red underwear.

The uniform was white-and-red… strangely familiar. She pondered this a bit. _A high school…MY high school. TheRyōō High School. And I am…_She looked at the glass surface. _Mirror…Yes, Mirror! My name is… My name is Kagami. But who, exactly, is Kagami?_

She sat on the toilet seat and removed her red tie. She strapped it around her hand and rested her chin on it. She needed to think about it… and have some rest.


	4. The Fountain Square

Kagami again. Actual violence in this chapter. We'll be returning to Tsukasa when the time is right, I promise.

* * *

Kagami woke up with her head between her thighs. Her muscles were aching slightly from the uncomfortable position, yet, strangely, she didn't feel sick. Even the itching of her skin was gone… Well, in most of the places anyway. She stretched herself and vacated the bathroom.

_Damn, I overslept._ The room was awash with darkness like the last time she saw it._ I could stay here till dawn, but what's the point? Yet outside is most likely dangerous. _She remembered the snakes and shivered a little. _What, exactly, happened back there?_

The events of the previous day were unclear, a blurred kaleidoscope of violent images. The more details she remembered, the more disturbing it was becoming. She shook her head. _I don't want to… think about it._

By now, she was starting to feel hungry and thirsty. That finally convinced her to move out. After quickly checking the window and noticing no movement outside, she headed downstairs. There was enough light to move around without trouble.

She must have had already covered close to a mile, but the city was huge and seemed to be entirely composed of variously sized and shaped tenements and condominia. And completely deserted. Corner shops looked at her with black, empty display windows, seemingly looted, like after a war or a large-scale natural disaster. Yet she found no signs of damage except occasional broken windows and doors. The only smells and sounds in this strange landscape came from Kagami herself, her sweat and soft footsteps. The pavement was rough and cold beneath her bare feet.

The architecture seemed unfamiliar and rather old, but beside determining that she didn't see this city before, Kagami couldn't say anything about it. Row after row of tall and monumental buildings, dark-gray plaster, dark-red brick, dark-brown stone. Thick walls, heavy doors and high windows. Endless columnades of cast-iron street lamps. Streets paved with polished stone, devoid of any markings or traffic lights. The monotonous routine was broken occasionally by various ornamentations, not especially cheerful but skillfully crafted. Serpentine bodies crawled up the walls, sinister human-like faces greeted the wanderer with v-shaped tongues, sculpted vines coiled around arches, mysterious symbols topped the porticoes. Sometimes Kagami even saw fully-fledged sculptures. Granite gargoyles watched from the roofs, baring their teeth. Sandstone, nude caryatids with bald heads, heavy breasts and merciless faces guarded the corners.

Kagami passed street after empty street. She was getting really thirsty, but there was obviously no water anywhere. As far as she could tell, the city was devoid of any life. There were no trees, no birds, not even insects or lichen between the pavement stones.

_Am I completely alone here? __Is it supposed to be another punishment? To wander an empty city endlessly, until returning to the snake pit will start to seem like a favourable option to the endless loneliness? What am I thinking? I'll probably die in three days from dehydration anyway._

Kagami stopped and shook her head. "No!" she said breaking the silence. "I won't give up! This place could be dead, but _I_ am alive. Alive."

Only a few hundred vigorous paces later she found a small square, maybe a hundred feet across. Her spirits rose as she saw a working fountain in the centre of it. The water was somewhat greenish and it slowly dripped from four demonic faces made of bronze into a small basin, or a font. Kagami shoved her face into it and started to drink the liquid greedily. It had a metallic taste and was obviously polluted, but she didn't care about it at the moment.

It was when she raised her head to catch some breath, when she caught a trace of movement in the corner of her eye and heard a faint, sharp throbbing sound. She looked around, but there was nothing visible now.

Kagami fought an urge to escape. She was fed up with running away by now. Instead she said aloud, "Who are you? Show yourself!"

Silence. Then a distant, screeching sound.

"Show yourself!"

She turned around again, swirling her lavender ponytails and saw that her order has been obeyed.

A girl on rollerblades appeared from one of the streets and started to draw circles around the square, tearing the silence up with a rhytmical, creepy, grinding sound. Her face was covered by an old hockey mask. Her skin was dirty, yet she was lean, athletically built and obviously very agile. She wore tough-looking gray shorts, knee- and elbowpads, and some kind of very dirty, white plastic armour plate strapped to the front of her torso. The armour was marked with a rust-coloured imprint of a hand. The girl clearly wasn't wearing anything beneath, since between her short blonde hair and her waist there was only bare skin, save for a nasty-looking, metal-bladed hockey stick strapped to it. Smaller pieces of armour were fixed to her shins and forearms as well, using even more straps. _Obviously she has a thing for leather straps or something,_ thought Kagami.

"Hey, you there! Stop, please! I just want to talk! Do you hear me?" yelled Kagami, as the Rollergirl made wide circles around her. Finally, she stopped, turned slowly towards Kagami with a screeching sound and looked at her cryptically from underneath the mask.

"Finally! So… my name is Kagami. And you? Who are you?" She addressed the now perfectly motionless stranger. "Do you have a name?"

The Rollergirl didn't say a word. Instead she readied her hockey stick and started to roll dead-on in Kagami's direction, quickly gaining speed by powerful pushes of her long legs, never taking her eyes off the lavender-haired woman. The Rollergirl moved with an almost inhuman grace and purpose. Her jagged blade briefly caught the moonlight. Kagami grimaced.

In the last moment, the Rollergirl suddenly accelerated, as Kagami tried to get out of the way. The lavender-haired woman barely saw a glimpse of the hockey stick in a high arc. She instinctively protected her head, heard a wet, slashing sound and the attacker was suddenly gone, speeding away.

Kagami felt a surge of pain in her right forearm. She raised it and looked in disbelief at a deep, jagged cut that ran across her skin from the back of her hand all the way to the elbow. It bled heavily. Small patches of skin dangled freely at the edges of the wound. In just seconds, the first large drops of blood started to drip onto the pavement with an unique, splashy sound.

"Why… did you do that?" Kagami asked, struck by the absurdity of the situation. She looked up. The Rollergirl was already turning around the fountain, eying her, holding the hockey stick in a perfectly horizontal position. Eight small wheels grinded against the stone. Soon, she was speeding towards Kagami again.

"Stop it!" yelled the Ryōō student, putting her fists on her hips. She smacked the ground with her bare foot. "Stop at once!"

The Rollergirl ignored her pleas. This time, Kagami watched her movements closely and readied herself to dodge the attack. Yet the blade, which was at one moment aiming at her throat, suddenly materialized much lower and cut deeply into Kagami's left thigh, shredding the side of her skirt in the process. Kagami screamed, stumbled and gripped her leg. The blood started to soak through her fingers.

The Rollergirl was making another round. Kagami felt tears forming in her eyes. It hurt. A part of her mind screamed at her to run, to hide, to curl into a ball and cry, but she was getting too irritated to actually pay attention to this voice. She grinded her teeth and straightened herself.

"Are you stupid? I'm talking to you!"

The Rollergirl was coming at her once more.

"You… brat! Do it again, I dare you!"

The Rollergirl attacked with her usual supernatural speed, but this time Kagami was too angry to simply wait. She jumped towards the attacker, trying to catch her arms. The Rollergirl ducked and thrusted her weapon into Kagami's lower body.

Kagami couldn't reach her opponent. Looking down, she realized why. The hockey stick impaled her through the abdomen. Seeing her belly pierced awoke a vivid memory in Kagami's mind. _It happened… before… I was… eviscerated… burned…!_

"Aaaaah!" screamed Kagami, as the Rollergirl started to turn her weapon in the wound, effortlessly balancing on her rollerblades. Kagami fought franticly to get a hold on the stick, but the wood was already crimson-wet and slippery. Her struggles succeded only in producing more pain and blood.

"Ahh… Let… me… go!" yelled Kagami. She now only wanted to reach that girl who caused her so much pain, to reach her and hurt her… To reach her…

And she did, yet not with her hand. The rational part of her mind watched with disbelief as her lavender ponytails launched forwards like striking snakes and coiled around Rollergirl's forearms. The Rollergirl froze and started to struggle, yet she couldn't break free. Kagami slammed the hockey stick aside and it finally left her wound and clattered across the square.

Kagami looked straight into Rollergirl's eyes. _Now you're going to talk. _She reached for her opponent's mask, but the Rollergirl didn't settle for patient waiting. With her arms immobilized close to her head, she attacked with a sharp kick between Kagami's legs.

The lavender-haired woman screamed as the heavy boot made contact with her crotch, but didn't release her opponent. Instead, she narrowed her eyes in anger and punched back at her solar plexus, crushing and denting the plastic armour. The Rollergirl coughed blood through her mask. Kagami struck with her other hand, this time aiming at the abdomen. The hit triggered a gasp of pain and caused girl's body to lean forward. Feeling the resistance weakening, Kagami criss-crossed her ponytails and locked Rollergirl's arms behind her back. Masked girl's body arched backwards and she let out a squeaky sound. Unwilling to get kicked again, Kagami forced her down to her knees.

The Rollergirl still tried to struggle. _Why don't you stay still! _Kagami grabbed masked girl's smooth neck with both hands and started to throttle her, jerking back and forth. The girl was letting out panicked grunts and gasps, and Kagami felt something slowly yielding under her grip. The blood from Kagami's wounded arm was trickling down the Rollergirl's white plastic armour, all the way down, soaking her shorts.

"You idiot! Why did you have to kill me? Why?" demanded Kagami, feeling her vision starting to blur. Finally she released Rollergirl's limp body, staggered back and collapsed into the pool of her own blood. She noticed a gasp coming from her fallen opponent, but was too weak to do anything by now. She looked up at the full moon.

Seconds passed and the death wasn't coming. _It's not something you can actually feel happening, can you? You don't know you're dying, because you're dying… And when you die, you don't have any means to know you have died. Ever._ A cold fear gripped Kagami, but she couldn't do anything.

Kagami sat upright, suddenly alarmed. She must have had passed out. The moon still shone above the square with the fountain. The Rollergirl or her weapon were nowhere to be seen. Kagami remembered the fight and looked herself over. Her wounds were gone.

_What was that? A… dream? Yes, it must h__ave been a dream…_

Kagami froze as she saw that her skirt was torn on the left side right up to her hip, showing the band of her red panties. There were also traces of dried blood on the pavement… And more blood on her clothing, more than she remembered.

Swallowing hard, she sent a mental command to her hair. The lavender ponytail obeyed. It rose and started to hover before her eyes. She caught it with her hand.

_Am I going mad?_


	5. The Changes

Thanks to Solarius Scorch from Zokusho's Mostly Lucky Star forum for beta'ing this piece. As the buildup continues and more facts unfold, the story goes back to innocent (?) Tsukasa. Have fun, R&R and stuff :)

* * *

Water dripped from Tsukasa's full breasts, delicate hands and lean thighs as she came ashore inside the mirror's grotto. Her only clothing was a strap that held her short, lavender hair above her eyes. She discarded her panties some time ago and didn't feel a real reason to put them on again. She was sure by now that the island was completely devoid of any sentient creatures, with the exception of Mr. Kame, of course. Besides, it felt more natural like that, especially when she was swimming. She approached the small, almost completely extinguished bonfire and unloaded her cargo of fruit, wood and fish from an impromptu sack she had made from the remains of her summer dress. She was getting really good at catching fish. They seemed to move so slow and clumsily, like they actually wanted to end up on the stick above a fire.

Tsukasa yawned and looked at the mirror. _Looks like Kagami is still asleep… She does really seem cute when she's asleep, not at all like the mean girl she normally pretends to be. Even those little horns are cute._ Tsukasa had discovered her own horns yesterday morning, when she had been looking herself over in a pool of water. She had felt a little unsettled by that fact back then, but after pondering this a bit she couldn't decide if she have had them before or not, so she simply has got over this fact and didn't think about it any more.

She had spent several days now like that, mostly sitting before the mirror and watching Kagami, except for short forays to get some food or get rid of refuse. She couldn't even sleep for long. After all, it was all that she could do to be with Kagami, who was exploring this scary city all by herself. Tsukasa was determined to accompany her to the best of her ability. The shock of seeing all those awful things has long since passed, replaced partially with longing, but mostly with happiness of seeing her sister alive and healthy.

Tsukasa swiveled her head at a trace of movement at the border of her field of vision. For a moment she thought that she saw something… like a disembodied eyeball, hovering in the darkness close to the cave's ceiling, but it was gone as soon as she looked straight at it. _It was probably nothing_, she thought and proceeded with setting up the fire for her evening meal. _After all, nothing could harm me here, in this special place. Especially with Mr. Kame, who's probably somewhere around._

As Tsukasa ate her dinner, she watched the girl in the mirror start yet another journey into the city. During the last few days, Kagami ventured in various directions from the fountain square. The place became something like her base of operations, mostly due to the water source. Tsukasa was worried a little about the apparent lack of food, yet Kagami seemed to thrive well on the water alone. Tsukasa decided that the water must have been somehow special and settled for that conclusion, at least for now.

A more perplexing thing was that the city her twin sister was in seemed to be sunk in a perpetual night. Tsukasa was sure of it by now. _Maybe it's just different time zone… or something_, she thought and shrugged. _I only hope Kagami won't get sick because of the lack of sun. I'm pretty sure it can be dangerous._

The place looked pretty much uniform and completely deserted in all directions. Kagami only had found two creatures so far. One was the Rollergirl, who had messed her up before, but now vanished as soon as she appeared. The other was some sort of flying creature, which attacked Kagami from above but was beaten back after scratching her right shoulder and ripping off the sleeve. It happened so quickly that Tsukasa had no chance of taking a better look at the creature that immediately escaped after being punched. Thankfully, Kagami's wound healed as quickly as previous ones.

Yawning, Tsukasa saw that Kagami was heading towards some kind of sharp-roofed tower that loomed above the buildings. Yet time passed and the tower seemed to be almost as far as ever before.

Tsukasa slowly started to slide into unconsciousness, catching only glimpses of her sister, who kept marching ahead. The last thing Tsukasa saw before finally falling asleep was a vast open space and some kind of immense, multi-towered building at the other side of it.

She only awoke when a sudden darkness fell across the cave, illuminated now only by some faint embers in the fireplace. Tsukasa jumped to her feet.

"It's… gone!" she cried. The mirror was no longer showing anything, except for a completely black surface. "What happened?" she cried again, on a verge of panic. She ran towards the mirror, but there wasn't anything more to be seen. It was black, motionless, dead.

"No! Sis! Come back! Kagami! Kagamiii!"

She collapsed to her knees, feeling her heart pound. But the image wasn't coming back.

She cried, called her sister's name, sobbed and finally just knelt motionlessly in the thickening darkness, trying to pierce the black surface with her eyes. But minutes passed and the mirror was still blank; it didn't even reflect Tsukasa's own face..

It was not long before dawn when Tsukasa finally got out of the grotto, badly in need to pee. Her face shown marks of dried up tears. The sky was a canvas of breath-taking coulours, ranging from the black through all shades of blue to a delicate pinkish glow on the very eastern horizon.

_Staying here won't help… She's not going back by herself. __Somehow… I have to help her… I must!_

"Mr. Kame! Please, wake up! I need your help!"

She started to jerk the turtle, who was lying asleep on the beach. After a few minutes, he finally opened one eye and looked at Tsukasa with irritation.

"Ehhh…! I am very sorry, but… but my sister… She disappeared! I must find her!"

Mr. Kame closed his eye back. For some strange reason though, Tsukasa was now absolutely sure that he knew the solution.

"Don't ignore me, please! You know everything, you must know how to get to her as well! There must be a way, I refuse to believe there's none!"

The turtle hid his head in his shell. Tsukasa shook him for a few minutes more, to no avail. Finally, she dropped on her knees and put her hands together.

"Please, you're my only hope! I'll do everything to get to her! Everything, just show me, please!" Tsukasa dropped her face to the ground. "Everything…" she sobbed.

She felt a prod to her head. She raised her glazed eyes to see Mr. Kame looking directly into them. Tsukasa didn't recoil from his stern gaze for what seemed to be a very long time. Eventually it looked like the turtle decided on something, because he nodded his horned head and turned around, proceeding towards the grotto that Tsukasa had left a few minutes earlier. She promptly followed him.

They entered the half-sunken tunnel. Tsukasa was holding on to Mr. Kame's shell. The darkness was complete, since neither bonfire nor the mirror was alight anymore. She felt Mr. Kame swimming slowly, leading her to the main cave, but they didn't came ashore. Instead, he led her to the right following the wall to the submerged part of the grotto. Tsukasa noticed the water was getting deeper here. When Mr. Kame stopped, it almost reached Tsukasa's neck.

The turtle submerged, swam around the girl and finally prodded her a little in the rear. She made a small step and stumbled upon something strange. There was something regular under her feet. Moreover, Tsukasa felt some kind of radiation coming out of it, making the skin on her leg to itch and muscles to tingle a bit.

She took a deep breath, ducked underwater and started to explore the sandy bottom. Sure enough, there was something… Like a regular, even stone with some kind of strange symbols engraved upon it. Before long she realized they were kanji letters. _What? A… whore?_

The strange energies were much more prominent now. Tsukasa felt something alike to being on a verge of arousal. It was certainly different, not exactly erotic, yet familiar in the way that she could either shrug it off or start touching herself and give in to it completely. Except that touching herself was not needed in this case. She just decided to yield and it happened immediately.

Some kind of discharge traveled down Tsukasa's fingers and caused a violent reaction; the stone started to crumble. Within seconds it caved in. The girl felt a slight exhaustion, not unlike after an orgasm. Not unlike at all, since she also felt rather invigorated and pleased with herself. Her hands started to explore the fissure and before long she realized it was some kind of vertical tunnel, who knows how deep, but definitely _man_-made. Tsukasa stood up and gasped for air.

"I guess you have shown me what I wanted, Mr. Kame."

She swallowed hard to manage her fear, took as a deep breath as she could, and dived in. The shaft was circular and maybe two meters wide. She propelled her body down by pushing away the tunnel walls. Before long she started to feel increasing pressure. She couldn't do anything about this beside hoping for the end of the shaft to be near.

A few minutes passed as she was plunging down in total darkness. Her lungs, completely emptied by now, started to hurt really bad. She realized she was approaching the edge of suffocation. Yet she trusted Mr. Kame. Were it to be the only route to reach Kagami, Tsukasa was determined to see to it's end.

She was getting weaker and slower. Her body was burning through the last reserves of the oxygen. A realisation came to her that even if she tried to go back now, she probably wouldn't make it. In this very moment she saw some kind of faint, blue radiance coming from below. She mustered her remaining strength and propelled herself further down.

The tunnel ended abruptly, entering some immeasurably huge underwater cave. The light came from somewhere down and far away, radiating from something that looked like a blue paper lantern in an evening fog. The glow was barely enough to give hints of the vastness of the cave, to be able to tell a wall from the floor by the difference in shades. The only objects that were more or less visible were enormous stalagmites rising from the cave floor like small, sharp-sloped mountains.

Tsukasa made it maybe twenty meters into the open space when she felt the last of her strength leaving her. Yet at this moment, at the point when she was about to drown, she instinctively understood with a perfect clarity that drowning didn't matter anymore. Dying made no sense in this narrative. The thing that made sense was that Mr. Kame sent her here to find Kagami.

The horned girl closed her eyes and embraced her fate by inhaling deeply. The water invaded her lungs, triggering a violent involuntary reaction. Tsukasa started to throw herself in an animal panic, yet on some level she was as confident as before. And finally, when her vision started to darken, it happened. With a sharp, violent pain the skin and flesh on her sides started to split apart and form horizontal slits between her ribs. With a final spike of agony, the slits melded with her inner organs and released a flurry of bubbles, getting rid of the last of the useless air.

Tsukasa opened her eyes and inhaled again, slowly. She felt water rushing through her wind pipe and filling her chest. The awful pressure in her ears was gone. The girl exhaled, keeping her mouth shut. The water left her lungs through the slits and envigorated her, returned all her strength. Tsukasa felt like she'd just been born again, somehow returned to the primordial ocean from where all life came from. She smiled and slowly flipped backwards. Nothing was restraining her true self anymore, neither time or clothing, or even misguided human evolution. She felt absolutely free. Now she could move through the water to anywhere she desired. Anything was possible. She straightened her body and with a powerful push accelerated towards the light.


	6. Underwater

Thanks for R&R. I'll respond briefly to the people without ff accounts: yes, Alice is certainly my inspiration, and finding no Alice fic that satisfied me was certainly a factor... Add Divine Comedy as the second inspiration. I'm not that good with symbolism, it's really hard to conceive symbolism that's both fathomable (unlike J. Joyce) and not cheap (unlike... well, most cases). It's more like an experience, a weird road to travel in a weird world. Still anything can happen yet. In this chapter, I finally reveal some of the cards. Hope you'll like it.

CAUTION: this chapter is the first that fully deserves M rating. Contains a rather weird sex scene with something not quite human.

* * *

The lithe form of Tsukasa's body skimmed in the direction of the mysterious glow. She was swimming just above the rough bottom of the cave. The visibility was much better now. Quartz fragments embedded in the rocks caught the light and shone like small diamonds. There were virtually no fish nor underwater flora here, Tsukasa could only see some small, crab-like living forms that persisted on the rocky floor despite the seeming lack of food.

She stopped by the base of a stalagmite that must have equaled Tokyo Tower in size. She graciously swam several meters up and cautiously looked out in the direction of the glow.

A shipwreck was lying, or rather standing, there in an almost normal position, only tilted sideways a bit. Its metal hull was broken in half and a huge hole was torn open in its side. Tsukasa was no expert, but it looked like a large passenger ferry of some kind. How it ended down there, in a huge cavern beneath the island, was a different matter altogether. No less strange was the fact that every lamp and window of this ship emitted a bright, blueish light, illuminating the ground in a radius of several hundred meters.

Tsukasa approached the wreck as close to the bedrock as possible, swimming through the absolutely still and silent water. The metal wall slowly rose before her. Above it she saw multiple decks, stacked on top on each other in a pyramid-like fashion, adorned with railings, lifeboats and external staircases. It was topped with a huge chimney, glued to a structure that reminded of an airport's control tower, presumably the ship's bridge. Its glow was particularly strong, so strong it would hide anyone inside from Tsukasa's view. Of course no human, nor even Mr. Kame could survive at such depth. A cold wave swept down her spine as she imagined a crew of human skeletons maintaining the ship and keeping it alight to lure mortals into their chilly embraces. Tsukasa's eyes went wide in alert, but she didn't slow down.

The ship was mostly covered with remains of white paint. Only the bottom section of the hull, up to maybe six meters above the ground, was painted blue. Tsukasa ascended a bit and approached the wall close to the border between those two colours, well below the lowest row of windows. She instinctively knew that it was the best position to stay unseen, yet her heart was pounding hard and her gills worked on the double. _If they're ghosts, they might not need to see me to find me… and they'll be able to go right through walls!_

Suddenly, Tsukasa saw something floating out of the gaping hole in the ship's midsection. She immediately cowered as close as possible to the metal wall, feeling her pulse quickening. A large, disembodied eyeball floated out of the broken hull and started to look around. Tsukasa gulped, but it was too late for escape now, so she just tried to remain as motionless as possible. _So I wasn't imagining it! It looks exactly like the eyeball in my cavern!_ Tsukasa felt that under normal circumstances she would have panicked, but the circumstances were far from normal. She felt powerful with her newborn form and, more importantly, she couldn't let Kagami down. Or maybe she was simply more stoic than she thought she was. Easy to frighten maybe, but very hard to break.

The eyeball floated there, surveying its surroundings. Getting through the hole, like Tsukasa had planned, was out of the question now. Besides, the eye could notice her at any moment. She broke out of paralysis and cautiously swam upwards. When she finally ascended above the horrifying manifestation, she coiled her body and shot upwards like a barracuda.

Having cleared the distance in seconds, she grabbed the railing, swung her body above it and skimmed away, her breasts just centimeters above the deck. The vibrating, dull sound caused by her hands colliding with the metal railing startled her. Seeing a half-open door to her right, Tsukasa changed her bearing mid-flight by rolling around her shoulder and shot into the opening, swimming on her back. She scurried through the corridors at random, simply trying to hide as deep into the bowels of the ship as possible.

When Tsukasa finally stopped, feeling fairly safe, she found herself near a large staircase, a wide, square shaft starting two storeys below her position and going at least six more upwards. The spacious balcony she was floating above was floored with a decaying red carpet. Walls, stairs and railings were mostly rusted-through, but here and there the intense illumination was reflected by a patch of chrome that hasn't fallen off yet. No skeletons or ghosts were visible, nor discarded equipment, abandoned luggage or anything at all, like the ship has been clean and empty when it had sunk. Granted, she didn't check any rooms yet, but was not exactly eager to do so.

Going to the bridge seemed like a reasonable option, so Tsukasa flew above the railing into the spacious central shaft. Absurdly, she remembered a similar scene from an old music video with Christopher Walken*. She smiled to herself and proceeded upwards, finding the higher balconies more or less similar, only the outgoing corridors seemed shorter and shorter. Finally, she made it to the windowed part of the staircase, close to the top deck. Her eyes landed on a big, marble board hanging on the wall in a place where no one going up or down could miss it. Tsukasa's eyes widened when she deciphered her own name written in Roman alphabet. She hastily proceeded to read the rest of the text, thankfully this time in kanji.

**MS HIIRAGI TSUKASA**

**(1990-2093)**

**Named in the memory a woman for whom her big family was not enough. She found it too constricting and sought out more love, betraying her husband on numerous occasions which even led her to ****the necessity of an abortion at age of 35. Though she sincerely loved her family, she chose to conveniently ignore the plight of the rest of humanity (including the foreign prostitute who begged her to stand up for her in front of the police and due to her refusal, ended up back in slavery).**

**We send Hiiragi Tsukasa's body ****on her final journey to the place where she won't be able to take comfort in anyone. May she never rest in peace.**

Tsukasa was staring at the board for a very long time, without any sign of emotion on her face. She was motionless, not counting small movements of her arms and legs she made to keep her in place. Finally, the meaning of the message started to find a way into her brain.

_So I was right… I am dead. That surely explains a lot__, those magic powers, Mr. Kame and stuff. Turns out being dead is not that bad. I'm young and… pretty… again, and Kagami too. This could mean all the people who died ended up like us. Not bad at all. And this… ship… Isn't it like in the Greek mythology? A boat to send me to afterlife? So there won't be any ghosts onboard, I'm safe! And they even gave me an epitaph engraved in stone. Truth be told, it could be a lot worse, like that I never did anything worthwhile in my life or something. They even kind of wished me an eternal life in the end. I wonder if that ferryman guy is somewhere around? Someone has to be hiding behind those eyeballs that watch me._

Two storeys later Tsukasa reached the upper end of the staircase. She ignored the exit to the sunbathing deck and went for the door labeled "No Entry" instead. A second, smaller staircase was there, leading even further up. The intense light coming from above brought to mind a nuclear reactor, not a passenger ferry bridge. Tsukasa proceeded, shielding her eyes with one hand. She pushed open the final door at the top of the stairs.

With a mixture of disappointment and relief she found the bridge empty. Aside from the ridiculously strong electrical lighting, it looked fairly normal at a first sight. Some rotating chairs, control panels, a battery of large, blank TV screens, steering wheel… And one thing that didn't fit. Tsukasa didn't have a clue about layout of modern ships' bridges, but she was positive they didn't normally include a pedestal covered with runes in the middle.

The lavender-haired girl placed her hands on the device. It was made from a light-coloured stone. A large, eight-pointed star in a circle covered its topside and in the middle of it there was an erected cylinder with a hole on the top, also shaped like a star, this time five-pointed. It reminded her of a keyhole. Tsukasa also noticed a faint, rhythmical vibration coming out of pedestal, bit alike to the one that she encountered back in the cave, in the smooth stone that crumbled under her touch and let her into the underwater shaft. She released her energies, but this time it didn't work. She felt like she was trying to lift a truck. Whatever power was needed to activate the device, it was way beyond her league.

Tsukasa floated around the bridge for a while, but it was apparently of little use for a girl without even a driving license. Especially since the ship was wrecked. She sighed, pouting her lips.

_The ferryman. I saw one of the eyeballs floating out of the ship's side below. I __hope he knows how to get out of this island._

She left the bridge and dived into the main shaft, all the way down. She passed the cafeteria level through which she entered the ship, then two levels of passenger cabins under the main deck. The shaft ended here, but the wide stairs continued into the floor, this time at least six meters deep without any stops. Tsukasa swam around the corner at the bottom end and faced a lateral corridor with a door labeled "Cargo Deck" at each end. Tsukasa turned left, passed beside a large niche which was housing a reception room of sorts and slowly opened the door.

She saw a huge swath of rusted floor and a big, eight-pointed star painted white on the opposite wall, ten meters away. _It looks like that one on the bridge!_ she thought and launched herself in its direction. _It seems something is in the centre of it… _She was so preoccupied with the arcane symbol that no sooner than halfway from the door she realized she wasn't alone here. She looked sideways and her eyes went wide in terror.

It took a moment to fully perceive the size of the creature that made its lair in the spacious cargo deck. Its main body looked like a car-sized sack of greenish, bumpy skin, but it apparently contained only a small part of creature's mass, as countless tentacles were coming out of it. Several of them, thicker then Tsukasa's leg, laid about on the floor. Dozens of thinner, yet longer appendages sprawled in all directions, some hovering in the water, most going out through the cracks in the floor and walls, making the creature look like a giant-sized neural cell grafted into a cybernetic casing. It also had eyes. Many of them. Variously sized, stuck into seemingly random locations on the upper body. And now all those eyes were turning towards Tsukasa.

She cowered and quickly looked around, but it was too late to escape. In a fraction of a second, dozens of disturbingly human-looking eyes locked onto her, momentarily transfixing the girl like a snake's gaze would transfix a mouse. The tentacles started to move.

As fear started to overwhelm her, Tsukasa understood everything in a sudden flash._ This monster is not a ferryman, but… a warden.. I'm not supposed to be here, I couldn't possibly be here, no human could… and that's why it's… surprised. And angry. It's going to kill me now._

The tentacles were coming from all directions. Tsukasa made no move, still transfixed by the creature's gaze. _The way it… he's looking at me… He's not only angry. There's something more… something… male. I know that look very well._

With that thought, everything suddenly jumped into place in Tsukasa's mind. Everything was perfectly clear now, like in that moment just before her second birth. Some primal, almost alien instinct inside her told her that while she couldn't run or fight this creature, there were other ways, ways she was much better suited for. Just like many times before on that bizarre day, Tsukasa did not question this powerful voice, but naturally followed through. The implacable, mystical force was already stirring inside her. She straightened herself and lazily stretched her arms above her head, then arched a bit backwards and let her arms loose, presenting her fair body in all its glory. She bit her lip and smiled shyly, looking the creature straight in the eye.

As soon as she did that, mysterious energies rushed through her veins again, yet nowhere as painfully as the last time. She felt a warm tide rising inside her and drowning her in something both deceivingly soft and immensely powerful. It soon filled her body and she instinctively focused it to explode outwards, like a silent, invisible supernova. Her senses fired up, her skin started to tingle, her nipples hardened, yet at the same time she felt very much in control. That couldn't be said about the monster, who was still looking her in the eyes and so had no chance to avoid the full force of the silent, warm wave. Probably he didn't even notice. This kind of magic didn't impose anything on him nor messed up the way he thought; it just slightly changed his _priorities_.

Two large tentacles coiled around Tsukasa's arms, but they didn't proceed to tear her apart. Almost gently, the girl was pulled towards the creature, deep into the mass of thin, writhing appendages. The multiple, human-like eyes explored every inch of Tsukasa's skin. Her cheeks and breasts blushed, but she wasn't exactly feeling shy or even afraid. She was proud she had a body that someone could watch with such piety, and most of all, she was starting to feel really excited now. She stared back at the monster.

It straightened itself, gaining full meter in height and slowly rotated Tsukasa's body backwards. She bended her knees as her legs started to move upwards. Finally, she winded up in an upside-down position. She didn't see the creature now, yet she was pretty much sure he was watching her backside with as much attention as the front. She gave him a few seconds and then arched backwards, sliding her gaze across the rusted floor, the mass of tentacles and finally into his eyes again.

A tentacle greeted her face, prodding her nose cautiously. Those smaller tentacles didn't look like they belonged to an octopus at all. They were smooth and ended in a bulge the size of a large bottle. A fissure opened at the end of the bulge, like a teethless mouth. _Or a vagina_, Tsukasa thought. She ran her tongue around the opening, then stuck it inside, exploring the pinkish flesh of the strange organ. She mused that a manhood could fit there as comfortably. Something told her that while her being female had an impact on the situation, it could easily turn out the same if she weren't.

A second tentacle started to rub her side, sliding across her sensible gill slits, one by one. Tsukasa's ribs had been always ticklish, but this time it was different. The sensation was actually quite pleasurable. A third tentacle ran along her spine, rubbing the skin with its lips. It slowly continued over her buttock and further down the arched leg. A fourth tentacle came from below, touched her belly button, prodded her right breast, wobbling it a little and proceeded to rub her upper torso and collarbone. A fifth tentacle caught her small foot and started to smooch her fingers. This time she giggled a little and broke off the kiss. The freed tentacle proceeded to brush her lavender hair. It did so with great curiosity. The girl started to really regret that her hands were tied. She wanted to touch, not only to be touched.

Tsukasa's body rotated further to a more horizontal position, as another tentacle collided with her buttock. The appendage examined it for a while, then slid between her thighs, rubbing her womanhood for a moment. Tsukasa shivered a little as the rubber-like hose was being pulled through between her legs. She would have gasped, but the water left her mouth without a sound. The tentacle bended double back and ascended to explore her small, lavender triangle of pubic hair.

With what little freedom of movement she had, Tsukasa rotated a bit sideways, so the tentacle that was rubbing her collarbone ended on top of her breast. The appendage scurried around a little, then finally found her hard, erected nipple and closed its mouth on it. Tsukasa bared her teeth in delight. She slowly started to cradle her hips, rubbing against the tentacle that ran between her legs. With the monster's other appendages constantly kissing and petting various parts of her body, she started to feel really high. Still, those things were more like his hands than anything else. Tsukasa felt that, despite their looks, they weren't as sensitive as a human mouth or vagina would have been. She wanted more. Not only to receive, but also to give. To embrace it fully.

She started to squeeze the large, octopus-like tentacles that were holding her arms. After a moment the monster understood and uncoiled them, turning Tsukasa's body more upright in the process. He turned now his full attention to rubbing and kissing her thighs, her belly, her neck, her breasts and pussy.

Tsukasa put her hands upon the main body of the creature. She looked into his eyes and started to kiss them randomly. She ran her fingers across a wide skin fold that must have been containing his huge mouth. The nameless creature opened it briefly, showing a jagged line of yellow teeth the size of small swords and licked Tsukasa once with a strength enough to flatten her breasts and push her away a little. Her torso and face were now covered by a thin layer of slime. She licked her mouth, tasting the monster saliva in a best approximation of kissing she could hope for, then brushed her whole body against his "face" in response.

She proceeded downwards until she finally found what she was looking for, yet another fold of his skin that opened up under her caresses and let out a quite human-looking penis. Ran over by her nimble fingers, it quickly turned hard. It was minuscle compared to the size of the whole creature, but very large by human standards. Tsukasa wasn't even that surprised, she was rather glad. _Who… knows… he's not natural… he might have… been a human once…_ Tsukasa didn't knew from where those ideas came from, but her current state coupled with her natural dislike of pondering anything too much kept her from such distractions.

Without further delays, she turned her back to the creature and slowly descended, taking his manhood between her thighs. When she felt it touching her entry, she proceeded even slower, giving herself time to accommodate for its size. But when she felt it completely in, her moves started to hasten again. With her current excitement, after all this foreplay, not much was really needed. When the monster came inside her, it was the final stimulus she needed to explode into space.

It was in this moment, the point of orgasm, when the creature was at its most vulnerable. The mysterious power that resided inside Tsukasa understood that well and feeling no opposition from her mind, it acted. Dark tendrils ran through her burning nerves like a pattern of black lightning. They didn't stop at the point where the girl and the monster were temporalily joined. They proceeded into his body, in that instant finding all the weak points. They found many. The creature's shape wasn't natural, it ran on pure life force. Not like a fractalous, perfectly efficient and impossibly intricate flow pattern found in human body, but like a huge lake of white magma that powered the crude machinery of the creature's form. All it took was to pull the plug out. So she did.

The enormous surge of energy almost overloaded the link. It flowed into Tsukasa's body like an untamed river, a raging cascade of pure power that had to be quickly managed and stored in every cell of her body, or she would explode. Her fractalous energy structure almost ruptured in some places but finally endured the stress. It was burning now with a steady, blinding light, ten times as powerful as before.

When the intense pleasure finally subsided and Tsukasa came to her senses, she noticed that the room was now drowned in almost complete darkness. Not that it was relevant now. A small, pitch-black nimbus appeared above her head, visible only because its edges emanated deep violet light. The centre of the nimbus shone a thousand times stronger, but no human eye could perceive that radiance, yet it allowed her to _see_ everything, not only through darkness but also solid matter. She was aware of every room on this ship and could see it in detail if she only concentrated a little. She even perceived the huge dimensions of the cave and its general layout.

The girl straightened herself. Her face displayed no emotion. Her mind was now spotless, purged of any trivial thoughts. The sheer amount of the life force she had stolen lifted her to a new level of being.

The only thing that remained of the monster was a palm-sized starfish lying about on the floor. Tsukasa picked it up and examined briefly. It was alive and had a weak supernatural aura, but whatever human-like presence it once had, was now all gone. Only the animal part of the creature remained.

Tsukasa put the starfish on her left breast. As she expected, the animal caught her nipple with its mouth and then glued itself to her skin. With a single thought, she opened a small energy link between them, much more innocent though than at the previous time. Then the lavender-haired girl turned to the only light source left on the whole ship. A crystal cyllinder protruded from the centre of the eight-pointed star she saw before on the wall. She motioned slightly and the cyllinder springed from the hole and flew straight into her hand. Tsukasa turned the cyllinder around. It was made from a slightly glowing, white crystal, and it turned out it wasn't exactly a cyllinder. It elongated into a sharp spike on a base of a five-pointed star.

Tsukasa looked up, her face still emotionless. A second later, she turned into a blurred human arrow which flew across the deck, up the staircase and into the bridge, all in a matter of mere seconds.

She stopped next to the pedestal and stuck the crystal object into the keyhole. She looked through the window into the absolute darkness of the deep sea and then turned the lock.

All gates opened, the huge amount of energy stored in Tsukasa's body rushed through her arm into the crystal and beyond. Chains of white lightning exploded from the pedestal. Currents of mystical energy ran through the superstructure of the ship, reaching its bow and stern in a blink of an eye. The metal itself started to glow. The immaterial lightning danced across corridors, turned electric cables white-hot, melted dirt and small sea creatures that had made the mistake of settling in the wreck.

A large, pulsating sphere of white energy encapsulated the bridge, illuminating the cave a hundred times stronger than ever before. Powerful discharges started to shoot out of it, hitting the deck. With an unearthly, low-pitched and immensely powerful whine, thousands tons of metal started to reform. The sand and rock from around the ship exploded in all directions, immediately obscuring the view with a huge cloud of dirt. Out of it, the hull slowly started to rise. It was quickly losing its wreck-like appearance. Everywhere the rust melted and reformed into shining metal plates, that were quickly covered by a layer of paint. The engine coughed, whirred and awoke to life, utterly disregarding the lack of air. The propellers started to turn and the ship started to accelerate, shaking from the resistance of the water. Soon it was going with a speed of an airplane, all the time ascending.

The light pulsating from the bridge faded away. Tsukasa felt her energy almost spent. She took away her hand from the crystal and on a whim gave the last few drops to the starfish. Then Tsukasa collapsed, back to her old self that seemed now utterly pitiful in comparison.

When the sea receded and sunlight flooded the room, Tsukasa curled into a ball and started to vomit water out of her lungs, feeling the first seizures of the decompression sickness. Soon, she lost consciousness.

The sun was already low over the western horizon when Tsukasa awoke. She found herself on the sunbathing deck, lying on her back on the rubbery floor. The ship was awash with orange light. She blinked and inhaled deeply, then stood up and came over to the railing, resting her elbows on it. Whatever suffering she was experiencing before, now she was feeling quite normally.

The island sprawled in both directions before her eyes, a lush carpet of green foliage with a customary steep mountain in the middle, several kilometers inland. The picture stirred her heart. She had never been a person who was overtly keen on sightseeing, but she always had a thing for the sea.

The events of the day seemed like a dream now, but the ship proved their reality. Not that Tsukasa was in any doubt. While her gills were gone now, she felt that she could easily summon them again. And there was the starfish, still clinging to her breast. An unpleasant thought passed through Tsukasa's mind. _I did something… bad. I've… raped this creature. Maybe even killed it, in a way._ She sighed. _Nothing could be done about it now, anyway. Kagami might be in danger. It'll be kind of sad to leave this place, though…_

A slight breeze brushed her hair. With her face thoughtful, eyes fixed into the distance, a lone figure on the ship bathed in the sunset, she looked quite romantic. Well, as long as you were someone who wouldn't regard her horns or nudity as something really that important. Mr. Kame didn't. He remembered that once he might had been different, but that was a long time ago. Right now he had to make it onboard. This girl achieved something impossible, something that he had been secretly hoping for but was too wise to really believe in. She'd be leaving this island after all. He didn't plan to stay behind. He swam vigorously towards the ship.

Tsukasa finally noticed him and her eyes went wide. She ran down the external staircase, her small feet drumming quickly against the metal steps. In about a minute she made it to the lowest deck and threw herself against the railing.

"Mr. Kame! You must come on board! But how?" she screamed, looking panicked. She glanced quickly at a life ring, but there was obviously no way she could haul Mr. Kame's weight onboard. "What can I do, what can I do?"

Mr. Kame approached the side of the ship and looked up. Sometimes being a turtle wasn't exactly easy.

Tsukasa had always relied on other people to take care of her. Yet, right now there was nobody here. No help in sight. Her eyes started to turn wet, but she managed to compose herself and suppress the feeling of helplessness. _Come on, Tsukasa,_ she thought to herself,_ you're not a helpless girl anymore. You have magical powers, you defeated the monster and raised this ship from the sea bottom. You can do it. _I_ can do it._

She blinked to get rid of the tears and looked around. Railings, life rings, lifeboats… _lifeboats!_ Tsukasa approached the control panel of the nearest one. _And if I break something? Hell, I need Mr. Kame!_ She pondered the controls for a while and then flipped a switch.

With a hellish noise, the restrains withdrew and the boat slid down the rails beyond the side of the ship. Tsukasa watched as for what seemed like very long time, but must've been no more than few seconds, it was shrinking in her eyes and then hit the sea surface with a tremendous splash.

Several seconds later, Mr. Kame dared to emerge above the surface and seeing the boat, he approached it and clumsily heaved himself onboard. "I am sure this thing can lift you up!" yelled Tsukasa. "I'll get you here and then we're going to sail to Kagami together! After I figure the controls out, that is!" she added and started to giggle.

* * *

*_Weapon of Choice_.


	7. The Tower

Sorry for some delay (still took less than a year like the chapter 2), but this time you can expect actual dialogue. I am also sorry to say it ends with a cliffhanger, since I din't want to post a 10k+ words chapter. Thanks to Solarius Scorch for beta'ing. R&R please. Enjoy.

* * *

The never-ending night hung over the nameless city as quietly and motionlessly as ever. The air was perfectly still, undisturbed by a slightest wind or sound. Whatever differences could be found between house blocks, six storeys or ten, brick or plaster, statue or no statue, they ultimately didn't amount to anything. Shape after a dark shape, rows of abandoned, lifeless, odourless buildings. Even the soft sound of the girl's footsteps seemed inappropriately loud in the absolute silence.

The prolonged loneliness started to really weigh on Kagami's shoulders. Perhaps normally she would be able to ignore it for the most part, but not in this strange city, not with those strange happenings and memories. She didn't remember how she got here. Nothing seemed natural. No point of reference existed here, no notion of what was the wrong or the right thing to do, no purpose to be found other than to fight for survival. Which seemed a hopeless case anyway, due to the obvious lack of any food sources. The constant hunger was making it really hard to be optimistic.

Giving up wasn't something that Kagami did easily, so she kept scouting around the fountain square day after day, never really finding anything besides the empty streets. That didn't make her any less afraid. Not of dying or getting hurt, but of sliding into madness. Who knew, she could have crossed that line long ago. Mortal wounds that healed without a trace, her hair that was alive, memories of horrible suffering, a city which really shouldn't be possible. Maybe this whole place only existed in her imagination, while she was lying in a hospital, beyond help, with no chance of recovering. She would remain in this imagined labyrinth alone for the rest of her days.

She usually shrugged off such extreme thoughts as counter-productive, but they kept returning, especially when she laid down to sleep. During the "day" she kept walking and exploring, keeping the worst out of her mind, but that didn't mean she felt good. She started to really long for that insane rollergirl to return. After all, she was the only sentient creature Kagami had seen in days. Perhaps the next time it would be possible to made that psycho to talk. While this seemed like a slim chance, the empty city promised no chance at all.

This "day" – a rather empty concept in a city of perpetual night – turned out to be a little different. She was almost ready to return to the square to quench her thirst and fall one more step closer to despair, when she saw the tower. It wasn't much, just a pencil-width silhouette in the distance, but that was enough of a point of reference to spark some hope, like the fountain square before. At the very least, the tower promised enough elevation to get some bigger picture of the surroundings. That was at least some sort of plan and Kagami clang to that idea with all her strength, as it kept her from losing sanity.

Hours passed as she was marching under the huge moon, an athletic girl with two long, lavender ponytails, dressed in a torn high school uniform. She was really used to walking barefoot by now. Once or twice she cut her foot against some sharp stone, but the wounds weren't very painful – and, of course, disappeared in minutes. If they had been real at all.

She tried to recall as much memories as possible, but it wasn't easy. Details of her previous life were slipping between her fingers. Some childhood and high school memories… and not much more, except for that horrible moment: the pain and the smell of burned flesh. Her flesh. But did the last memory even belong to that previous world? It didn't really fit. She recalled once more the faces of people who were close to her. Tsukasa, her other sisters, the parents, Konata… few others. It made it all even more difficult. How she could find them? Was it even possible? Or was she lost in this strange world for good? The longing was hard to bear.

As anything finite, her long march towards the distant tower finally reached its end. It might have lasted eight or twelve hours, but it wasn't important anymore. For some time Kagami could see some kind of clearing located deep in the maze of buildings. Now, as she made it to the last row of buildings, she found herself facing a vast valley cut into the cityscape by a dark, greenish river. The tower itself turned to be just one of several, even if largest by far. They all protruded from a huge, complex structure of dark-gray stone that looked a bit like a cross between a Tibetan monastery and a European colonial castle. The building sat on an island in the middle of the river. Or _was_ the island. In some places, the lowest storeys seemed to came right out of the water.

A pair of tall, stone bridges were spanning between the island and both river shores. They were linked by a triangle-shaped courtyard, or a terrace, elevated at least twenty metres above the river. Two sides of the terrace were open, the third was closed by one of the shorter sides of the rectangular building. A flight of wide stairs with a pair of statues gave hints of it being the main entry. A second large terrace overlooked the courtyard, another twenty metres above.

Kagami stopped for a moment. Next to her, a staircase went down to the shore. The river tempted with an opportunity to finally take a bath. The pony-tailed girl was perfectly aware how dirty and stinking she had become. On one hand, if somebody was inside, she couldn't bear to meet them looking like that. On the other hand, somebody _could_ be inside, and that would make a naked dip in the river out of question. She could of course take a detour and bathe in a safe distance… Which still didn't rule out a possibility that the rollergirl or someone like her could notice that and prepare an ambush.

Kagami groaned and headed downstairs, into the deep shadow of the bridge. _It's completely dark here. I should be safe._

She decided to leave her red g-strings and bra on. She slowly lowered herself from the reinforced shore, looking around cautiously. The water was cool, but not cold. Despite the overall dire situation, Kagami felt relieved as it washed around her body. She didn't want to lose too much time though. Keeping herself afloat and upright using her legs alone, she quickly ran her hands over her skin, then submerged completely and washed her hair as thoroughly as possible. Finally she removed her bra and cleaned her breasts as well, but only just prior to climbing back ashore. Looking around all the time, she hastily put the fuku on. Only then she took off her panties and squeezed the water out of both parts of her underwear. The bra obviously needed to dry, but her g-strings were much smaller, as well as more _critical_, so she decided to put them back on immediately. The bra ended up tied to a metal pole.

It was only after all that hassle when she sighed with relief. Deciding against wasting any more time, she started to climb the stairs.

It took almost five minutes to cross the bridge. Kagami was wary of any movement, but nothing happened. The island palace seemed as empty as the rest of the city. Close up, the building didn't seem as huge as before, but it was certainly majestic. The triangle courtyard was surrounded from two sides by waist-high stone railings with a goat-like head topping them every ten metres. The third side was occupied by the face of the building, at least a hundred metres wide. It was composed of storeys stacked one upon another, each of them a little smaller than the previous one. The windows were scarce and narrow, but each was taller than Kagami. Apart from the impressive thickness of the walls, they revealed only darkness. Higher up, terraces and balconies took increasingly more space, up to the seventh floor, where steep, metal roofs covered the rest of the structure. Six square-based towers breached the roof, the big one in the centre, four smaller in each corner of the main body of the building and the last one in the back. The main tower was at least three times as tall as the others and had proportions of a modest skyscraper, despite sharing the historical look of the rest of the structure.

Kagami had discovered in the previous days that she could jump a few metres up quite easily, but the lowest windows of the palace seemed still too high. Her only choice was the main entrance, which she promptly approached.

Several dozens of stairs were stacked in a pyramid-like fashion with a spacey, flat area at the top. The double door itself was built into a niche. The door was black, made of metal and large enough for a moderately-sized car to drive through them.

The door was framed by a pair of larger-than-life statues. They resembled the bald, nude caryatides found throughout the city, but were both much less formal in pose and more extreme in shape. They looked incredibly muscular, but not in the overmuscled way like female bodybuilders Kagami had seen a few times on TV. Their bodies were structured in a slightly inhuman way, much heavier and stockier, allowing to carry the extra muscle without making the overall body shape grotesque. With their long, powerful legs and arms, they looked fast and agile instead. Their faces weren't exactly human either, with massive jawbones, which looked much more insectoid than masculine and made the faces surprisingly attractive. Their eyes lacked eyelids and their foreheads were topped with a pair of horns. Not small, crooked horns like Kagami had but thin, vertical spikes.

The figure on the left was closing one of her clawed hands on an exquisitely crafted scythe, as tall as herself. Her other hand rested on her hips. Her impressive breasts were supported by some sort of bra or low corset that looked like weaved from metal. Aside thick bracelets on her biceps and ankles, it was the only article of clothing she was wearing. As the statue kept her feet away from each other, Kagami noticed that the sculptor didn't omit the finer details of the model's anatomy.

The figure on the right kept her feet together but she was even less dressed, a necklace of three small skulls being more or less everything she was wearing. Her hands were put together, pointing downwards, like on Hindu holy paintings.

The features of the strange pair were clearly different, but their shapes and most of all the look of slight contempt and amusement on their faces made them look much alike. Perhaps most disturbingly, they seemed to look exactly at the spot where Kagami was standing. She spent several minutes watching every feature and detail of the shameless statues, until she finally managed to break the spell. Still, after climbing upstairs, she couldn't keep herself from appraising their stone buttocks. She felt a tingle of envy mixed with contempt, perhaps also a bit of shame stemming from the fact that she really liked what she saw.

The door turned out to be locked. Initially Kagami experienced a spike of irritation, but then she felt her heart jump. _It's locked from the inside… That means somebody locked it! Maybe they're still here! It's good I took that bath after all._

She grabbed a large, oval door-knocker and jammed it into the surface a few times. A deep, resonating sound tore the silence like ringing of a huge brass bell. For the next thirty seconds nothing happened. Kagami was ready to knock again, when suddenly a small flap opened in the door at her breast level.

She heard a high-pitched, yet rather harsh voice, something between a teenager's and a long-time alcohol addict's. Most definitely a male voice, too. It spoke in some strange, menacingly-sounding language that immediately reminded Kagami of the way Orcs had spoken in Steven Jackson's _Lord of the Rings_.

Only after a few seconds Kagami realized that she understood the alien words, however impossible it was. Amazingly, she started to discover knowledge she'd never thought she had. Apparently she knew that language. Speaking it was a different matter though. She still struggled to put together an answer, when the guy from the other side of the door spoke again, even more harshly.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"Me… Hiiragi Kagami… Who… are you?"

"I guard the gate."

"What is this… place?"

"The Temple."

"What temple… what _kind of_ temple?"

"Just Temple. We allow people to live here, if they behave. For a fee. Other than that, ask a priestess."

"People live here-yes?"

"Yes they do," answered the voice without a hint of sarcasm.

"Would you let me in, then?"

"Your fee has already been paid, so I guess I would."

Kagami heard several loud metallic sounds and the door opened, revealing a short person dressed in a black, hooded robe. He wasn't any taller than Konata, perhaps even shorter, but was so impossibly stocky that he must have been at least three times heavier. Kagami almost stumbled backwards in fear when she noticed that his skin was not of a human, more like of an elephant – dark gray, almost black and atrociously wrinkled. His features visible from underneath the hood were rough and brutal, his face square and ape-like, with prominent brows, flat nose and most disturbingly, red predatory eyes that seemed to glow in the dark.

"You may proceed," spoke the strange creature. "Just don't destroy or spoil anything, especially the sculptures." He kept looking at motionless Kagami, blinking periodically. After more than a minute he finally added, "I have to close the gate."

Kagami composed herself somewhat and walked into the corridor, trying to keep as much distance as possible. Then, as the creature seemed not aggressive, she cleared her throat and said, "Erm… Who did pay for my… stay here?"

The short creature locked the door, plunging the corridor in an almost complete darkness. His eyes turned out to be glowing indeed. Not before checking the locks he turned to Kagami and answered her question.

"Your familiar."

"My what?"

"Your familiar."

"Where I can find this… familiar of mine?"

"Ask a priestess."

"And where is this priestess?" Kagami's fear started to give way to annoyance.

"Somewhere inside."

"Where inside?"

"I don't know."

"Such honesty! Just great!" exclaimed Kagami, her anger quickly overwhelming her unfamiliarity with the language. "How does she look like then?"

"She's a Fiend."

"What?"

"She's a Fiend."

"In what way is it supposed to be helpful?"

"You'll find no other Fiends here."

Kagami had no stomach for this conversation anymore. "Ah, that's really relieving," she said and left.

She noticed a faint light coming from somewhere far down the corridor. There were multiple doors and side exits along the way, but being unsure where exactly she should go, Kagami ignored them and proceeded towards that light instead. The hallway was spacious, though she didn't notice any draft, which was unusual for such structures. The stone beneath her feet was dry and smooth.

After a while she noticed that the light was coming from a half-open door that ended the corridor. She also heard voices, this time in an unfamiliar language. Not much of a conversation either, just a couple of words spoken by two or three men. Kagami cautiously looked inside.

There was a large room which turned out to be the bottom of a stone staircase. It was lit by a small sphere set on a table in the middle of it. Four people dressed in a really weird and varied assortment of clothes were sitting by the table. They seemed to be playing some kind of game. The main table, as well as several smaller pieces of furniture that stood around it, were literally covered with lots of various props – dice, domino pieces, figurines and cards, to name but a few. Whatever this game was, it surely required lot of thinking, since the players looked very concentrated. There was also a tall, ingenious device with rows and rows of small stone discs that were rotated to display numbers from zero to nine, a scoreboard perhaps. As Kagami looked, a middle-aged man with a beard, dressed in a gray fur and a Santa Claus cap, said some words, placed a card on the table, rolled some dice, turned a few domino pieces and moved a cat figurine. One of the other players, a bald teenager wearing rags and cloth straps in every colour of the rainbow, nodded his head a few times, then everything went motionless again.

Kagami straightened herself, cleared her throat and entered the room, trying to look as businesslike as possible in her state of mind and dress.

"Good day! How's the game going? May I ask you some questions?" she tried in the _dark tongue _(as she started to call that language), raising her hand. She was ready for any reaction but the lack of it. And that's exactly what happened. Another player took his turn, not even looking at her.

_Maybe they don't understand_, thought Kagami and decided to fall back on Japanese.

"Excuse me, dear sirs, I only need some directions…"

Nobody seemed to hear her.

"Erm… _Good Muloningu… Mai yu her-p mi_?"

Still no effect.

"_Zdrasatvuytye_?_"_

"Izvenitye", answered the bearded guy without looking up. Kagami almost jumped from joy before remembering that her knowledge of Russian has been already spent. She put her fists on her hips and tried to push the advantage with further inquiry in the _dark tongue_.

"Priestess… Fiendish priestess? Familiar? Anyone?"

Her words hit the wall of silence yet again. The only observable reaction was that the next player waited till she finished before declaring his next move.

_Those people are mind-bogglingly rude! I guess it cannot be helped. I have to find that __supposedly fiendish priestess by myself. Honestly, fiendish or not, surely beats that rudeness hands down. Besides, I'm not somebody to be victimized easily!_

Unwilling to go back into the dark corridor, she headed to the stairs that climbed around the square central space. They seemed to go straight to the topmost floor of the palace, not counting the towers and potential attic.

When she had climbed to the third floor, a sound of metal hitting wood reached her ears. She headed into a hallway. It was dark of course, but a faint glow in the distance gave hint that the corridor ended with some sort of window or balcony. As she was walking towards it, the sounds were getting louder. She had time to get a look at the hallway itself. The only decorations she saw were puzzling curtains that covered some of the side exits, obviously made of rings of some black metal. Whoever had hanged them here, must've been either superhumanly strong or equipped with a crane.

When Kagami finally reached the far end of the corridor, she found out that it didn't end with a mere balcony. Instead she found herself on the top level of a Roman-like arena under open sky, round, descending below ground level and completely surrounded by buildings, including the rearmost tower. A half-naked man in a horned helmet could be seen in the arena proper, attacking some wooden dummies with his sword. Tall, muscular and blonde-haired, he looked a bit dangerous. Kagami felt an impulse to avoid him, but dismissed the thought as immature.

"Excuse me, sir!" she said aloud in the _dark tongue_, walking downstairs. "Perhaps you could give me some directions?"

The man froze and turned to her. His wide chest was heaving and he had eyes of a madman. Kagami stopped but didn't buckle under that gaze. After all, they were separated by at least twenty metres of space and the three-metre tall vertical wall of the arena. "I am looking for a priestess," she said in the way of explanation.

The man started to shout something and gesture at her, like he wanted her to come down to him. _Like hell I will_, thought Kagami. She also realized that the man was shouting in what seemed to be English. Her knowledge of that language wasn't exactly broad, but she managed to piece together the meaning of his words. _He wants me to fight him? Do I look like a freaking gladiator?_

"_Mi – no fighta_," she said, waving her hands and smiling apologetically. "_Ai rook for… ehm…_"

The man interrupted her, this time launching into a prolonged tirade, gesturing vividly with his hands.

_What the hell is he rambling about? He… wants to teach me how to fight to fight him? This is getting more ridiculous every minute_. At this moment, she noticed a light coming out of one of the eight exits up on the rim of the arena.

"_Good bai_," she said, turned on her heel and headed towards that exit. The man was getting more and more agitated, but he didn't seem to follow her. Soon, she entered the corridor. The light was coming from around the corner, so she promptly followed it and nearly bumped into a short, weird creature. They both appraised each other with a measure of shock, especially on Kagami's part, granted.

The creature carried a glowing orb in one hand and several long, black metal bars in the other. They must have been damn heavy, yet he was holding them almost casually. He must've been the same type of creature that Kagami saw guarding the gate, but this one was completely naked, showing an overwhelming amount of gray, wrinkled, hairless and extremely tough-looking skin. His built was so impossibly blocky that his perfectly humanlike genitals were almost hidden from the view. Almost.

Kagami turned red, trying not to stare and almost succeeding at that.

"How could you show yourself like that!" she exclaimed, finally able to look away.

The strange exhibitionist blinked and said slowly, "Like what?"

"Like… _that_!" Kagami clenched her fists.

"I have work to do," answered the creature and walked Kagami around, apparently unfazed in the slightest.

"Ehm… wait!" she managed, wrestling her embarrassment down. "Where could I find a priestess?"

"One of them was walking by the furniture stockpile, down the hall," answered the creature without looking back. Kagami gawked at him for a longer moment, then rapidly turned on her heel and walked away. Her heart was pounding. _How could he? That's plain gross! What kind of wicked customs this place has? Certainly, I won't be made into fighting anybody or running around in the nude!_

Kagami spent another ten minutes walking through various, similarly looking corridors. She noticed these were much better decorated, with walls covered in various engravings and murals, depicting scenes that were more or less gross. She was so preoccupied with examining a statue of generously-built, naked man with goat's head she found besides a corner that she almost missed the priestess.

Kagami heard a soft but very heavy footstep and lifted her eyes to notice the tallest woman she had ever seen, easily three of four heads taller than herself. The huge woman was wearing a long, flowing black robe. Kagami immediately recognized her features as belonging to one of the statues that stood by the gate of the building, with bald head, black spikes-horns and a jaw that could probably bite human head in half. Still, the statue hadn't revealed that the model's skin was in the colour of fresh blood nor that she had two golden, glowing orbs for eyes. The girl stumbled backwards and pressed her back into the wall, seized by some primal awe.

Somehow the monstrous woman didn't notice Kagami, or just didn't care, since she walked right pass the former Ryōō student. It took Kagami several seconds to break out of stupor. Yet, at the exact moment she was ready to launch into a chase, a hand covered her mouth.

"Are you crazy?" she heard a nervous, male whisper in broken _dark tongue_. "Do you want to die?"

Kagami's first reaction was fear, but it quickly turned to anger. She brushed off the hand with ease and turned to see a young, tall Asian man in a tattered sports jacket, black t-shirt and casual trousers. He looked angry, but the moment he saw her face, a strange and immediate transformation had befallen him. His eyes went wide with fear and he almost butt-headed her as he started to bow really vigorously and really low.

"I am very sorry, Mistress! I had no idea who you are! I would never want to disrespect you! Please, judge me harshly but justly!"

"Now what the hell are you talking about? Maybe you were a little harsh, but you didn't disrespect me… Don't make a fool of yourself… Will you?" she sighed, resting her hand on her hip. _Man, that's embarrassing. _"It's really all right."

The man looked up cautiously, then straightened himself.

"I am sorry. I just wanted to help… I mistook you for a human."

"What? Mistook me for… a human? Well I am a human, for your knowledge!"

"I'd love to talk about it but see… maybe not here, okay? Follow me please."

Kagami sighed. She was still angry, but this guy was way more normal than anybody she had met earlier. And even kinda cute, for a weirdo, that is.

"Let's go then."


	8. The Awaken

About two chapters ago I've decided to make the story more symbolic, to establish some common language that'll allow the readers to make heads or tails of the story. It's going to look less and less random from now on. Since I'm only versed with Tarot, I'm going to go that way. Stay tuned for leads or just enjoy the supernatural, sex & violence. Review - if you dare!

* * *

Kagami and the stranger, who insisted on being called a „hermit", entered a small room somewhere in the bowels of the _temple_. The room turned out to be occupied by a very thin teenage girl dressed in a white nightgown. She was sitting in a corner and clutching one of the glowing orbs that were used here to produce light. The girl didn't seem to notice their arrival. Her face was obscured by long, black hair.

"Who is she?"

"Her name is Ai. She doesn't talk too much, though. To tell the truth, it's her room, but she doesn't mind me living here."

"Well, that's… charming."

"I guess I am a lucky guy. A well-lit room is a rare commodity here. Those Thonughi do not usually part with their lamps, leaving us, puny humans, to dwell in the darkness."

"Thon… ughi?"

"Yes, the short guys that run the place. But those lamps need energy anyway, that us humans usually cannot provide. Ai has a rare talent to be able to feed it with her lifeforce. Doesn't serve her health well, but she's mortally afraid of darkness."

"With her lifeforce? What does it mean?"

"The force that animates us here. That eliminates the need for food, allows to heal any injury given enough time and provides us with eternal youth. Probably eternal, that is."

"What the hell are you talking about? Are you mad?"

"Now you're making fun of me."

"Am not!"

"I'd understand if you were a poor, lost soul. But you're a damn Devil!"

"Am not!"

"Oh yeah? So what's about these horns?"

Kagami found herself at a loss of words. She touched one of the protrusions on her forehead.

"Yes, those," Hermit nodded.

"Humans… don't have horns… do they?" asked Kagami in a quiet, broken voice. "So I've turned into some kind of… monster?"

"Turned? Haven't you been like this all your life?"

"I… I don't think so…"

"Hmm… would you tell me your story then?"

Kagami was desperate enough to nod in agreement without any further inquiry. "I… I was born in Japan… In the nineteen ninety." She slowly started to tell the fragmented tale of her life, not only to this guy, but also to herself. She found it rewarding every time she managed to unearth a forgotten name or a long-lost memory. It saddened her to realise that she had spent so many years in a world that now seemed so distant and unreal. "And that's how I got here," she finished after a half an hour or so.

The man nodded his head. "I understand now… I also lived in this world you describe, in the beginning of the twenty-first century. But that was a long time ago. Looks like you have died and ended up here, like the rest of us."

"Died? I am not dead!"

"Of course you aren't. I only said you died."

"People who die, stay dead. There is no freaking afterlife! It's a physical impossibility."

"Call it what you want. I'm not somebody who's overtly concerned with that sort of thing either. The fact is that we're alive now, in this different world where things are unlike back on Earth, and there's no return. Trust me, I have spent many years here. I haven't eaten once during that time and yet I am alive. Not aged a day, either. How would you explain that, my devil lady?"

"Hallucination. You might not even be real."

"And you call me mad? Open your eyes and embrace the reality, lady. Keep denying it and you'll turn into a Loon, like those guys downstairs, who believe they're at a never-ending games convention. Damn it! I've never heard of a demon who had turned into a Loon. I thought you guys were at home here."

"And I thought we've established that I am a human! Okay, I have horns, but those memories…"

"You're oozing with power. You've almost broken my arm, you seem to be able to see in the dark, your hair moves by itself sometimes, and you've survived a fight with a Fury. Some of us, the lost souls, develop supernatural abilities to a certain degree, but nothing so obscenely overt. You speak demonic fluently days from arrival, while it took me years to learn it. Plus, your body…"

"Don't change the subject!"

"Pardon me, but it's just a tad too perfect."

"That… that hardly proves anything," she protested weakly.

"I agree it's kind of strange, you being reincarnated as a demon. I always thought demons were of this world. But I've never claimed I knew everything."

"So… what do you know… about this world?"

"It's being run by demons. Like the Thonughi, Fiends, Devils or Furies, and many more species. Pretty obvious, since they have supernatural powers and are adapted to the environment. We, the former humans, are mostly ignored… if we're lucky. Thankfully, most of humans do not fully realize they're dead. They're called Loons, or Zombies. They act as if they still were on Earth, conveniently ignoring anything that might undermine that illusion. Most of us start like this… but some have enough of a mind to see through this. We're called the Awaken. Of course there are a lot of levels in between… like that swordsman in the arena. I think he realizes he died, which doesn't prevent him from being plain crazy. Ai might also be described as partly Awaken, she just prefers her own small world. Not the worst that can happen. It beats being reduced to a Ghoul."

"A… Ghoul?"

"Every one of us seems to have lost a part of who we once were, but there are people who had their personalities and memories completely wiped out, went _tabula rasa_, reduced to animal state. I suppose they could learn how to be human again, given time and opportunity. Usually though they just roam the countryside, crazed with hunger and frightened by the world they don't even have the capability to describe. Needless to say, they often end up dead for the second time. But don't worry, demons cannot be reduced to Ghouls."

"What happens then? When you die a second time?"

"Who knows? You go someplace else, maybe even worse? Lose what precious little memories you have? Or just dissolve into nothingness? The fact that we've been given a second life proves nothing. I am afraid it's as much of a mystery here as it was back on Earth. And… there is more to loose here."

"More to loose? This place doesn't look like much."

"You never age, rarely got sick and do not need money to survive. How could you ignore that?"

"So this whole world looks like… this place?"

"Frankly, I don't know. I am sure this city isn't endless, but outside there's nothing but hungry Furies stalking the streets. It's not bad enough in here for me to risk my skin and go out. After all, sometimes I get to meet interesting people none the less, like yourself…"

"This doesn't add up in places. We don't need to eat, do we? Then why are we hungry?"

"This is irrelevant. A stomach is built the way it is. It might not be possible to die from hunger, but you're still suffering from it. You might be able to regenerate, but you still feel pain, don't you? Looks like it's just how this world works. In time you'll get used to being hungry. Going cannibal is the only other option, at least in this city."

"Erm… right," said Kagami, suddenly feeling uneasy. "Is that what happened to the inhabitants? They were… eaten?"

"The inhabitants? I don't know. It seems that the city has been deserted for ages. You know, with the lack of any plant life, the rain or the wind and so on, it could probably stand for millions of years before crumbling to dust. No permanent inhabitants I am aware of beyond the Temple."

"_It's not a temple. It's the Tower_", an eerie voice interrupted. They both jerked up and looked at Ai, startled. The girl raised her head and looked straight at Kagami with her large, black eyes. "_They have been building it in their quest for power for hundreds of years. They have sacrificed so many to transcend this desolate place. You do realise what eventually happens to the Tower, do you?_"

"What do you mean?" asked Kagami slowly. The girl, however, didn't answer. She hung her head, returning to the contemplation of her glowing orb.

"Heh, don't pay attention. That's perfectly normal. Sometimes she just shots up and says some _non-sequitur_…"

Kagami indeed wasn't paying attention – to his words. She crouched before the dark-haired girl.

"What happens to the tower?"

"_It couldn't be stopped from the moment you had arrived_", whispered Ai. "_They took your familiar and thus sealed their fate._"

She grabbed the girl by her shoulders. "The familiar! Who is it? What do you know of him?" Ai didn't answer, so Kagami looked up at the Hermit. "Do you know anything about it? What's a familiar?"

"Well, I've heard that word… A familiar is some kind of demonic pet."

"That… Thonugh by the gate said that my familiar had paid for my stay here."

"Hmm… Somebody _could_ visit this place a couple of weeks ago, I've heard the gate closing. I haven't seen a new face here, yet… the place is huge, and if that's a demon we're talking about…"

"Those priestesses! How many of them are here?"

"Well, two."

"Will they know?"

"I think so, but…"

Kagami stood up with a determined look on her face. "I must see them! You must know where they usually are to be found."

"Wait! Are you crazy? They're not to be trifled with!"

"What, do they kill strangers on sight or something?"

"Well, I'm not sure, but … they're demons of fire! They can burn you to cinders with a mere thought!"

"Look, I have to take that risk. This is really important. Besides, if I am indeed a demon, it should be easier to reason with them, right?

"Suit yourself! But I'm not going with you."

It took Kagami some time to navigate the dark and mostly empty maze of corridors, until she arrived exactly below the main tower, at what the Hermit called "the sanctum". Even so, she miscalculated and ended up on a U-shaped gallery that hung several metres above her destination. After a brief disappointment that befell her when she saw no obvious way down, she noticed that while the room below was very brightly lit, the gallery itself provided a lot of shadow and cover.

_Maybe it's for the better. It won't hurt to take a look at the place before storming right in_, she thought and looked into the sanctum from behind a pillar.

An out-of-scale female figure in the black robe stood in the middle of the room by what seemed to be an altar. She was facing away from Kagami. Two black menacing spikes danced above her red skull as she moved her head about. Kagami saw her hands touching variously coloured crystals that laid on the oval stone table that stood there between four large, trapezoidal rocks.

Whatever the monstrous priestess was doing, she didn't look very zealous at that and, by extension, didn't seem aggressive. Kagami had already decided to pull back and quietly descend to the sanctum's floor to approach her, when a double door opened suddenly and another huge figure strolled out the shadows and into the room.

This red-skinned giantess wasn't any taller than the other one but looked much more dangerous, as she held a large, nasty looking axe and was wearing some sort of black armour. It was composed of metal shin- and armguards and a hard-leather breastplate, very top-heavy and opened under both arms to accommodate for her shapes. Metal shoulder pads and a v-shaped leather piece below the abdomen added to the protection. A shirt that she wore underneath the armour formed short sleeves and a loose skirt around her hips. Her head was protected by an open helmet with an extra-thick forehead piece, segmented neck armour and a pair of slits through which her horns protruded. Her eyes glowed like embers underneath. Though her face was somewhat alien, Kagami recognized her features immediately.

_That's the one whose statue has that skull necklace. Is she a temple guardian or something? _Kagami didn't intend to eavesdrop, but she was also reluctant to come out now and confront both of those monsters at once. While she stood there undecided, the guardian approached the altar, removing her helmet. The priestess looked up and smiled. It was a smile that made Kagami shiver, as it revealed far too many spiky teeth for her tastes.

The guardian turned to one of the four trapezoidal stones and opened a hatch in it. It must've been some sort of cupboard, since she put her helmet and axe inside. Then she proceeded to remove her belt, heavy with various equipment that dangled from it. Stuffing it into the cupboard, she suddenly spoke in an inhumanly low, husky voice that gave Kagami more shivers, as it was both frightening and strangely stirring.

"_**I caught a Fury,**_" she said in the demonic tongue.

"_**Interesting,**_", responded the priestess with a similar, yet slightly more silky voice. She seemed amused. "_**Are they getting clumsy?**_"

"_**Not exactly**_," said the guardian, taking off her armguards. She put them in the cupboard and threw something red on the altar. Kagami gulped as she recognised her bra. "_**She seemed to be preoccupied with this**_."

"_**How amusing. What would a Fury want with that pretty thing?**_"

The guardian shrugged and placed her bare foot on the altar. She proceeded to unbuckle her shin armour. The other Fiend smiled and ran a claw across the exposed knee.

"_**She seemed to enjoy the smell.**_"

"_**Cute.**_ _**Maybe she's in love?**_"

"_**Demons don't love**_," said the guardian, removing her shoulder pads. The priestess gently grabbed her face and ran a long, dark-red tongue across her lips. The lips parted after a moment, showing a set of frightening teeth and the two tongues met for a while, slithering against one another. Kagami's pulse accelerated slightly. She decided it wasn't the best moment to go out of hiding yet.

"_**So what did you do with her?**_" asked the priestess, returning to the altar. The other demon started to unbuckle one of the multiple horizontal belts that secured her breastplate. Her long, clawed fingers were surprisingly nimble. "_**I carried her to the top of the tower myself.**_" She unfastened another belt and added "_**Thonughi will process her in due time.**_" Seeing her slowly removing her armour and stretching her huge muscles under the thin, loose shirt Kagami couldn't take her eyes off her.

The priestess seemed to share that feeling, as she looked her friend up and smiled with her predatory smile again. "_**An unexpected stroke of luck, it was**_," she said. "_**Now we'll be just one or two good demons short of attaining enough power to create the weapon.**_" She grabbed Kagami's bra and looked it up. It looked really small in her claws. "_**Any idea who left it? High quality stuff. Might belong to a Devil or a Succubus, hmm?**_"

The guardian lifted her shirt and started to undo the ties which held the front of it together. Kagami noticed that the red-skinned demon was indeed wearing her metal necklace with three black skulls, as well as leather panties, fastened with two shiny buckles on her wide hips. "_**Might belong to anybody. Don't get your hopes too high. Three demons in just a couple of weeks seem too good to be true. It took us centuries to get to this point**_," she said, at the same time revealing an impressive six-pack of muscles at her abdomen. "_**Besides, somebody hostile might notice a sudden spike of energy coming from this plane and track our relay antenna down.**_" She pulled the shirt off her broad shoulders. Her heavy breasts didn't look any less firm as their sculpted counterparts. The were capped with a pair of almost black, erected nipples. Kagami felt the same happening to her own nipples, but she was too transfixed by the view to waste a thought on it.

"_**You worry too much.**_"

"_**Maybe I do,**_" said the guardian and unbuckled her panties. She pulled the leather from between her thighs, revealing her hairless skin. She stretched herself, now as nude as in the sculpted form that had made such an impression on Kagami earlier that day. Yet the sculpture was just a teaser compared to what she was seeing now. She realized that she was blushing.

The guardian approached the priestess. She grabbed her by the buttocks and effortlessly seated her on the altar. Then she proceeded to open the front of her black robe.

_Oh my god! Are they going to…?_

The robe fell to the sides, now framing the priestess' red-skinned, powerful body. A horizontal strap of metal mesh protected the lower half of her breasts, but her dark-brown womanhood was fully exposed. The other Fiend knelt down, ran her hands up the priestess' legs and buried her face between her thighs.

It wasn't certainly the first time in her life when Kagami saw two women having sex. Yet she had never thought she'll ever see it live, though. Especially with such exotic, powerful… in a certain way, _perfect_… creatures. The strangeness, inappropriateness of the situation just made it all more exciting, however wrong it might have seemed. As one monster wobbled her head, assaulting the other's private parts, Kagami felt she was getting wet herself. She knelt down, her eyes only a few centimetres above the edge of the railing.

What she was about to do next, she did so many times that now everything went automatic from that point on. She pulled her panties down and stuffed her hand between her legs, immediately feeling both relief and a spike in excitement. Her hand was soon completely covered in her juices, which despite - or maybe because of - the wrongness of the whole situation flowed from Kagami in much greater quantity than during any porn movie she had ever watched.

The demons made love in silence, Kagami could only hear their hastened breaths and completely inappropriate, wet, slimy sounds the guardian's tongue was making in contact with the priestess' pussy. The priestess threw her head back, opening her terrifying jaw and licking her own face with her inhumanly long tongue. Kagami could only imagine what it would be like to have, instead of her fingers, such a tongue inside her vagina. That thought alone was enough to squeeze a moan out of her.

The priestess put one of her bare feet on the altar and grabbed her lover by the horns, forcing her into faster movements. Kagami placed her hand under her top and started to squeeze her stone-hard nipple. She felt the climax approaching fast, maybe too fast, but now it wasn't the time to plan ahead and delay fulfilment as long as possible, as she usually did during her long, lonely evenings. She fell to the ground, rolled to the stomach shedding her panties completely, fingered herself some more and came so hard that she had to bury her teeth in her forearm to stop a loud scream from escaping her lips.

She laid there, calming down, for a minute or two, then started to gather herself up. She didn't look so happy anymore.

_Now that's official, I'm really fucked up, _she thought to herself. _I've masturbated in a public place to two women having sex. And fucking liked it. If this really is hell, I certainly earned it._

She looked over the railing. The couple continued with similar level of subtlety as before. The guardian held her lover's leg high up in the air and was slowly rubbing her womanhood against the other woman's. They looked almost like one machine with dozens of muscles working in perfect discipline.

_I'd better go upstairs while they're… busy. __I don't like the whole "processing" thing a bit, but I have to see that… Fury. And the "familiar", too. Geez… If only my dear sister Inori could see me now. She'd be driven out of her mind._

**Inori** jerked up from her seat, feeling a sudden itch on the back of her head. She scratched it. _That's funny… Like somebody was watching me. Aaah, bullshit. Where was I?_


	9. The Familiar

I've got nothing to say except I'm really happy I finally posted this. This was a little difficult due to new characters being introduced. Before you start to wonder after a few verses, this is still the same story. Have fun.

* * *

**Inori** moaned and rested her dark-red head back on the unfolded anti-acceleration seat, which practically filled the tight, dark, metal compartment she was in. The air smelt of ozone, sweat and perfume. A distant whine of engines could be heard. Various pieces of Inori's all-black uniform were laying about the room and she didn't remember removing all of them. _It must've been the drug_, she thought. All she was wearing now were two pairs of stockings. One pair was made of thin etheric velvet, probably the most comfortable and exquisite fabric in all of Hell. The other pair, a bit shorter, was a part of her armour, half a centimeter thick, smooth and with openings opposite to her knees. It also didn't cover her toes nor heels.

She was slowly coming to her senses. _Did somebody just probed my mind somehow? Or was it still the part of the high? Or a _deja vu_?_ She blinked slowly and raised the emptied can of Soulsence to her eyes. If you opened one, no amount of willpower could allow you not to finish it off in one go. Her sweated body was still trembling slightly from the experience, but the various memories brought about by the drink were already fading. She remembered the rapture of the first kiss, the overwhelming relief after being saved by a rope from a fall from a mountainside, the elation of swimming with the dolphins. The memories, feelings that once belonged to somebody else, now stolen and turned into a delicacy, to be relived just one more time before dissolving into nothingness. _Mmmm… this stuff is first-class. And made from a male at that. I certainly prefer that…_ The last remains of the euphoric fog were dissolving, replaced by a deep longing, a feel of immense nostalgia that was saddening, but also purifying, the last unwilling gift from a man who thought he was given a second life in this world. The blue of Inori's eyes slowly gave way to usual red.

Inori was under orders to not use Soulsence unless necessary, since the stuff brought not only the bigger bang than any known drug, but was also useful for instantly restoring reserves of one's demonic power. She always considered this to be only an excuse to allow the use of it during military missions. _Ban it, and you have a rebellion on your hands… or worse, decadence. How could one handle the immortality in such a dull place without those Lord's gifts from Earth. Heh, if they only knew I was born there. Or rather, that poor, cute girl who I once was._

A beeping sound and a flashing light made her to roll her head. She jammed her finger into the receiver button.

"Speak," she said coldly.

"We have detected a possible target, Commissar," a male voice answered her. "Your presence is required in the cockpit."

"Affirmative."

She turned off the intercom and looked around. The red-digit clock indicated it was the four hundred and fifty seventh hour of flight. _So we've found it after all. Probably. Let's have a look, then._ Inori pulled on her knee-high, heavy boots, strapped them tight and secured the metal shin-guards into place. She decided against losing time to fully dress up just now. She just put on her greatcoat and officer's hat, then quickly and efficiently ran them over with her hands to adjust her uniform. Nothing less than a perfect look was expected from her. Then she opened the hatch and quickly walked down the corridor, rattling the metal floor with her footsteps. As she went, her dark-red hair slowly adjusted themselves into a flawless, half-long haircut.

The front of the cockpit was just wide enough to contain two large anti-acceleration seats, now occupied by a pair of men in heavily padded, black overalls and bulky helmets with full face-plates and protrusions to accommodate their horns. The rear end of the room, where Inori just entered, was a bit more spacious and housed two more seats. Various data was displayed in sepias on several large screens. The colour was soothing to Inori's devil eyes. Some control lights and runes were slowly blinking, blood-red cables pulsated slowly between the plates of black metal. A sky full of stars could be seen behind the armoured glass of the front window.

"Report," said Inori aloud, but without a hint of emotion.

"We've broken through another planar rift eighty-two minutes ago," answered one of the pilots. "We've just picked up a signal that has a signature of a magnitude seven relay antenna. The overall layout of the plane seems to be in accordance with the intel. No enemy activity was noticed."

"I need a visual confirmation if it's the place I'm looking for," answered Inori. "Regardless, no allied forces are present in this zone so the only option is to deny the asset to the enemy, whoever is operating it now. Arm a distortion warhead, my target is to be caught alive."

"Understood. Commencing run, short range attack pattern. ETA thirty minutes."

Back in her room, Inori took off her coat and started to dress up. First, two pairs of full-length fingerless gloves, complementing her stockings, the velvet ones beneath and the armoured ones on the top. A velvet bodystocking, which belonged to the gray area between elegance and immodesty. Over the bodystocking, a vest of flexible armour that tightly covered the torso from just above the crotch to just below the chin, but didn't limit arms' or legs' mobility in the slightest. Four straps that ran from the vest secured the gloves and stockings, and supported extra pieces which padded her hip joints and shoulders. Her black outfit didn't cover only her fingers and buttocks, the latter being a body part that was the least prone to damage.

Inori made a few bends and marked strikes, to ensure her clothing didn't constrain her. Content with the results, she turned to the more complex parts of her equipment. The most important was a deceptively small, black metal breastplate with shoulder-pads and a flat bulge on the back. It might've only covered her chest, but was enhanced with powerful technomagics, which gave various capabilities that went beyond the already impressive scope of Inori's natural talents. Four small runes glowed red on her left breast and then faded, letting Inori know that the vest was now fully linked to her own dark energies.

An oval, insectoid-like full helmet complemented the breastplate. It had two conical protrusions to accommodate for Inori's rather large set of horns. She donned it, but left the seemingly-opaque face-plate raised. Several metal cables extended from under the back of the helm and joined with the breastplate.

She proceeded to her weapons, securing them to her low-hung belt. One was a bulky slugthrower pistol, with a menacingly wide barrel opening; the other one, much smaller lightpistol. The latter was not very powerful, but it needed no ammunition beside what energy a demon's body could provide it with. The third weapon was more traditional, yet the most expensive of all. Inori reverently picked up her commissar's sabre and carefully fastened it to her left hip. The sabre was sheathed in a rune-riddled scabbard and secured inside by chains and bands of metal, but Inori knew well that no precaution was too much with that kind of a weapon.

She perused her cupboard a little and boosted her armament with several grenades of various types, two vicious-looking knives and a wrist-mounted, multi-purpose wire launcher with a bound spider-demon inside, which was indicated by a small, red arachnid image on the device. A image that seemed to move unless you were looking directly at it. Inori found it not only amusing, but also potentially useful as a psychological weapon.

The final piece of her equipment were metal gauntlets, extra-heavy by the knuckles. After securing them, she put her greatcoat back and headed back towards the cockpit.

**K****agami **was watching a group of robe-clad _Thonughi_ from her relatively safe lookout point behind a pillar, waiting for her breath to return to normal. Climbing to the top of the tower taxed even her, supposedly demonic, stamina. The square room was the size of a warehouse, since it covered the whole floor. Its multiple windows let the moonlight in. A massive kiln-like structure occupied the centre of the room. Faint orange glow emanated from its grated opening, large enough to shove a horse through.

The Thonughi were conversing aloud about the masked girl who sat unconscious on a throne-like chair. Even though Kagami was kind of expecting it, she still gulped, recognizing the person who almost had killed her a few days ago.

"All the aura readings are completed," said a Thonugh who wore a golden skullcap instead of a hood. "We should be fine with performing the correct rites."

"Maybe we should check again?"

"We've checked four times already."

"You can never be too sure."

"The priestess might go impatient, if you know what I mean. You, go and bring the cage up. In the meantime, let's salvage."

One of the demons headed towards the kiln, while the three remaining grabbed the girl by shoulders and legs and laid her on a low table.

"The breastplate is mostly useless, but at least quite rare," said Skullcap. "The rest… just clothing. Collectible stuff at best, I'm afraid."

"This looks interesting, though…" said one of the others and reached to girl's face.

"Leave her mask alone! She's a Fury, you moron."

"Don't worry, she's sedated, isn't she?" replied the short demon and began to unfasten Rollergirl's mask.

"Stop it at once, are you…" started Skullcap with a raised voice, but he was never allowed to finish. The mask connoisseur raised his trophy to his eyes; in the same moment the room was shaken by an unearthly, impossibly loud shriek. It took Kagami a moment to realize that it came from Rollergirl.

Everything started to happen real quickly. The Fury leaped high into the air, grabbing her mask. Kagami noticed her face was quite normal, if somewhat wild. Rollergirl seemed to freeze mid-air for a split-second, then she turned into a blur of movement that was hard to trace. Just a second or two later she was standing several meters away from the group of short demons, half-crouching, her mask back on her face, her arms extended and tipped with long claws.

"Back-to-back!" commanded the Skullcap, sounding only slightly agitated. The two Thonughi obeyed a little clumsily, pressing their backs against his and drawing some sharp implements from beneath their robes. "Arlo!" he addressed the last of his subordinates, who stood by the kiln, "stay there!" The Fury shifted her weight like a panther ready to pounce.

Whatever was going to happen next, Kagami wasn't intending to assume the role of a bystander. _I shouldn't have waited this long in the first place! _She strode from behind a column and headed straight towards the group. Her ponytails drew serpentine trails behind her.

"Everybody stop!" she shouted, throwing her hands outwards. The Thonugh facing her widened his eyes in surprise.

"Who is that?" demanded Skullcap, who was facing the other way.

"A female Devil."

"I can tell she's a female. Rotate right! I want to see her."

The trio of short, blocky demons started to rotate around an invisible axis, until their leader faced Kagami.

_That's much better_, she thought and demanded in a commanding tone, "What's going on here? Leave that poor girl alone, you perverts!"

The poor girl slowly shifted her weight from one leg to the other, then back, almost hypnotically, her elongated claws hovering just above the floor, her chest heaving under the bloodied armour.

"And who are you to interfere?" inquired the Thonugh.

"My name is Hiiragi Kagami… and I demand explanations!"

Skullcap glanced sideways at the Fury, with a slightest hint of uneasiness in his eyes.

"We're just following priestesses' orders."

"I've heard that line before! What's this _processing_ you do here is about… and where is my… _familiar_?" she asked, the strange word causing her to feel stupid.

"We feed the demons to the heart of the tower, thus increasing its output," he answered calmly. "To that end, we need to carefully measure each subject's powers, so a subject can be bound to the grid with the best possible efficiency."

"You… feed…?" Kagami found herself at a loss of words, unable even to launch into rage – for a short while, at least. "This is… horrible!"

Nobody seemed to react to her words. The intense feelings of loathing, powerlessness and creeping fear were threatening to overcome her. _What's the meaning of all this? Is it supposed to be like this? Are they evil? Is sacrificing demons evil? This world is so… alien! Somebody should do something! I am so… lost… What do I know about their customs? They don't seem to care, or be ashamed, or afraid of retribution! This is wrong, wrong! Everything is so wrong!_

"Have you… no shame at all?" she blurted, her eyes already getting wet. "This must… stop! What about the law?"

Surprisingly, Skullcap sighed. "It looks like you have some sense. Yet you're wrong. It's all about law. Priestesses are the law of this land, and by this law, all agents of chaos are put to a better use. Serving as power sources, they can't destroy, maim or despoil", he said. Despite his flat voice, Thonugh's words seemed well thought-off, not something he simply memorized. "A Thonugh's job is to build things, decrease entropy and maintain order. Without order, there is only decay. Without the law, there's no order. You should understand that much, as a Devil."

Kagami put herself together enough to protest. "It's not enough of an excuse for killing!"

"We don't kill anybody. They are unconscious, but alive."

"Still, they're imprisoned against their will!"

"Don't be so self-centered. The greater cause outweighs flimsy will. I urge you to be cooperative. If you drop this pretense, maybe you can be of more use than a power source. Even if not so, struggle will only bring useless damage and suffering. We shall wait until a priestess arrives to settle this problem."

"Wait… Stop! You… I am not your property, to be used as you please. And I am not self-centered!"

"The idea of property itself is self-centered," replied Skullcap, unfazed by Kagami's rebuttal. "We built this temple, yet we consider it our pride and responsibility, not property. If a sentient being cannot contribute more than it destroys, it is unworthy of allowing it to act freely. The entropy is a powerful enough force as it is."

"Who gave you the right to make such judgements? Your priestesses seem like vain tyrants."

"A right cannot be given, it must be earned. We earned it by constantly increasing order, utility and beauty of our surroundings. Can you say that for yourself? What did you do to earn any rights?"

Kagami found herself at a loss of words, again. The Thonughi seemed to be a little startled by the tirade of their leader. The Fury snorted and started to creep towards Kagami, never taking her eyes off the short demons. The lavender-haired girl watched this with increasing alertness, but tried to continue the word exchange.

"What about the inalienable rights? You cannot reduce someone to a… thing, just because he doesn't seem worthy in your eyes!"

"This creature is about to use her inalienable rights to disembowel you. Make no mistake, she's as sentient as you are."

"Wh… What?" The Fury was right beside Kagami now. She started to look her over and sniff the air. Kagami backed up a few steps. "Hey, stop this!"

"Help us to apprehend her, Devil" inserted Skullcap. "We don't have to be enemies."

The Fury swiftly turned around and noisily snorted at the Thonugh, then she started to growl menacingly.

"Wait a minute," said Kagami, seeing as Rollergirl wasn't obviously hostile. A plan started to assemble in her head. "I'm not convinced by what you say. Before I make any decisions, I need to talk to my… familiar."

"He's been fed already."

"You said he's not dead. Bring him back. Or… you might try talking to _her_," she added, gesturing at the Fury.

The Thonugh looked like he was weighing his options, diverting his gaze between Kagami and the clawed, snarling girl in the mask that crouched beside her.

"Fair enough," he finally said. "We cannot expect somebody to willfully cooperate without their familiar. He's a part of yourself, in a way." Kagami smiled involuntarily. Enforcing her will pleased her. She let this feeling to grow for a moment before chastening herself. _It was a logical conclusion, that's all_.

It took a few minutes for the Thonughi to perform the rites, which actually consisted of pulling and pushing various knobs and levers on the "kiln's" control panel. Kagami watched intently into the orange depth of the "furnace", tens of meters below the floor. It actually didn't look like a furnace at all. More like a deep silo filled with orange liquid and dense fumes, which were warm, but no scorching at all.

After a while she saw some movement down there. Something small and spherical was slowly rising through the mist. Kagami was completely puzzled as to what it was, even when she saw that it was a thick sphere made glass with a small, golden creature swimming inside. Her jaw dropped lower and lower, as she began to realize what, or who, exactly, might that little, unassuming fish be. At this moment, a disembodied voice spoke in her head.

"Happy-to-see-you-Mistress-it's-your-Gyopi-but-you'd-better-look-behind."

"Wait… what? How? Why?" she blurted in a state of complete shock. The fish started to swim franticly within the bowl, as if trying to get her to listen, but Kagami did nothing, until a booming, female voice from behind pierced her like a dagger.

"**Nice to meet you, little Devil.**"


	10. The Lightning

Big thanks are due to Solarius Scorch and Starasp for beta'ing this chapter. I'm also delighted by your reviews, people, keep them coming. reading those is a great motivation to keep working. This finalises the "tower" arc. The next chapter will probably switch back to Tsukasa.

* * *

**Kagami** wasn't sure what was the most disturbing thing about the skull-necklace-wearing, red-skinned woman. That she was a horned, clawed, toothy tower of muscle? That she was shamelessly naked and not exactly unremarkable as far as her feminine shapes were concerned? Or that she was holding an axe. And not a flimsy woodcutter's axe that some psycho or other might swing at you. No, this one looked like something made by people who designed it to kill other people and were really adept at it. The kind of axe that doesn't cut your bicep, but cleaves your arm clean off and buries into your chest shortly after. The fact that this axe looked oversized even for its current wielder didn't do much to diminish the effect.

The Fiendess assessed the situation with a single glance of her emotionless, unreal eyes. She made a few paces forwards and even that simple act filled Kagami with foreboding and sort of awe at her aura of power.

"**Glad everyone's present. I think this belongs to you**," she stated flatly in her inhumanly deep voice and threw a red object towards the group. Kagami blushed slightly when she recognized her bra falling on the ground. Despite her temperament, she failed to act before the momentary peace was broken by a sudden growl of the Fury. From this moment on, everything started to happen really quickly.

Kagami had barely enough time to notice the lean girl launching herself at the red-skinned "priestess" with a speed that defied the laws of anatomy, if not physics itself. The blurred silhouette started to circle around the Fiendess. The red demoness seemed motionless for a moment and then accelerated to an impossible speed as well, countering the flanking maneuver. They both stopped for a moment, facing each other, heaving, like two enemies in a Street Fighter game – with the difference that if the red demoness was like Zangief, the other seemed smaller than even Chun-Li, especially due to her squatted stance.

That lasted only for a split-second though. With speed more befitting a mantis than a giant, the priestess swung her axe top-down, crashing its blade into the stones as the Fury wasn't there anymore. She sailed through the air and impacted upon her enemy's chest. A clawed hand shoot towards the priestess' throat, but she deflected the attack enough with her spare hand that it missed her main artery. Still, a violent gush of almost-black blood sprayed from a sizeable hole opened in the side of her neck. The next attack targeted her burning eyes, but the Fury didn't have the time to complete it. A large hand closed on her neck, ripped her away from Fiend's body and sent her flying across the room. Even as Rollergirl flew, the bigger demon raised her hand. Kagami watched in disbelief, as a burning ball of… something started to form out of the thin air between the priestess' black claws.

Rollergirl collided with a wall at least ten meters away with a loud thud. Despite the brutality of the impact, she almost immediately tried to get up. The ball of fire, now the size of a human's head and searing through the air, denied her any chance to do that. Fiery, thunderous explosion momentarily obscured the view.

Kagami could only watch in shock, as the Fiendess strolled in the direction of the still-burning body. As she started to raise her axe, the former Ryōōstudent understood what's going to happen next. A feeling stronger even than the previous shock seized her.

"No!" she screamed, "Leave her alone!"

As if caused by her words, an energy release rippled the reality. An invisible wave smashed into the Fiendess and pushed her away with enough force to cause her to stumble several steps sideways and drop to her knee.

_Oh shit_, thought Kagami, yet she was readying herself for a fight rather than panicking. _Who did that_? She looked at Gyopi, who innocently hovered just beside her in his glass ball. Somehow she was sure it was him. Somehow she couldn't blame him, either.

The red demon slowly rose, glancing back at Kagami.

"**So, the affection is mutual, Devil? How cute**. **Seize her.**"

Before the lavender-haired girl understood what was the meaning of priestess' words, six hands caught her arms, legs and ponytails with an iron-like grip.

"No! Leave me alone!" cried Kagami. She wasn't pleading. There was a tingle of panic in her, but it was being quickly overrun and stomped over by her burning anger. The brutality she saw earlier shocked her enough, but this was truly the last straw.

"Let… me… go!" she screamed, trying to set herself free, pulling with an anger-driven force that increased every second. The stocky demons started to have trouble holding her down, despite their obvious strength. Yet they held fast, pulling her arms and legs apart and forcing her head backwards. Kagami felt a ball of fire growing within her chest, a knot of defiance and rage, filling her veins with molten lava and threatening to blow her up. An immense power that couldn't be easily subdued. She understood that it could destroy her… or be directed. Directed… and used to impose her will. And that was what she did, blowing all the restrains she put on herself during her whole life.

A primal scream escaped her lips as she released the built-up energies outwards. Searing arcs of lightning shot out of her hands and eyes. Thonughi, still holding onto her, took the full brunt of the discharge. Blue trails of electricity enveloped the group completely. Two bodies staggered out of the epicenter, jerking violently, flailing their arms and finally dropping to the ground, heaps of burned flesh and smoking robes.

Only Skullcap didn't let go of Kagami's hand, despite his golden helmet melting and his clothes catching fire. He screamed still, as the electrical fury subsided, discharging final sparks on Kagami's unnaturally bulged muscles. She screamed back at the Thonugh and tossed him violently across the room like a ragdoll. He vacated the tower through one of the windows, out of sight and out of mind.

Freed from the Thonughi, Kagami threw her hands forward and summoned the lightning again. This time it came much easier, almost naturally, her anger getting more and more malleable by her will. Multiple beams of blue energy shot through the air and contacted with Fiend's stomach. She withstood the discharge, but not without losing a lot of skin and muscle from her abdomen, now marred with a huge, black burn mark.

The priestess didn't wait for any further developments. She ignored the pain and entered her hyper-speed mode, circled the infuriated Devil around, emerged behind her and immediately brought her axe down. Its mass started to rapidly return to normal as the local time accelerated back. It struck the girl with full force between her shoulder blades. It tore through the white fabric, skin and bulged muscle and sent the girl flying a few meters forward. Normally it would be enough to cleave her small body in half, but her level of physical overload drastically reduced the damage. It didn't phase the red demon. Fiends knew that there was nothing that couldn't be broken by the simple virtue of hitting it repeatedly. Plus, one couldn't sustain such overload indefinitely. She raised her hand and summoned the flames of Hell. She almost forgot the girl's familiar and was rewarded for it with a telekinetic wave that suddenly broke her concentration and made her stagger a few paces backwards, right next to the huge opening of the "furnace".

Still, it wouldn't be much of a help for the lavender-haired Devil, as it took surprise to pull out such a maneuver. The Fiendess braced herself and resumed to prepare the fireball, now even bigger than before. She gestured the fourth Thonugh to tackle the silly fish familiar in the flying bowl. The girl rose to her knees and glanced back at her, but it was already too late…

The sound of an immense explosion coming from below almost deafened everybody. The tower started to shake an stir. Fear gripped Kagami's heart. Even the Fiendess looked shocked. Gyopi immediately took advantage of it and released another wave. The massive female shape lost the balance and fallen into the opening of the "kiln", disappearing within a second.

"It's-coming-down-we-must-jump-out!" spoke Gyopi in Kagami's head. She looked around franticly and saw that Rollergirl – or the half-burned husk that once was her – was slowly rising to her feet. Their eyes met.

"Run… ehm, Furi-chan! Run!" she screamed. The tower started to shift dangerously, as the deafening rumbling sounds from below shown no signs of subsiding.

Kagami and the Fury arrived at the window in the same moment, but the sight of immense cityscape almost two hundred meters below stopped them in their tracks. Gyopi just shot out above their heads and started to hover next to the crumbling tower. Kagami sent him a vicious gaze.

"Jump-out-I'll-save-you!"

_To die buried under __the stones, or to die splashing onto the ground? Great choice!_ Yet she had already decided.

"Furi-chan," she looked into the scared, green eyes behind the mask. "Trust me… let's jump together."

They jumped out the window, as far as they could, leaving the disintegrating tower behind. _Maybe the jumping… wasn't such a good idea!..._ thought Kagami and started to scream.

_As the tower continued to crumble down, __its delicate inner workings gone and silent, not mentioning that after Gyopi had left the grid there wasn't anybody who meddled with them anymore beyond the backs of its builders. The transmission was over for everyone concerned, including Kagami's sister. But it didn't matter anymore. The information was delivered and all sorts of events were set in motion, from grand and fateful ones to small and uncertain, like Tsukasa's story. The balance of power was starting to shift. _

**Inori** stood on a metal ledge that surrounded the now-open door of the spacious bomb bay. She was slowly removing her coat. The cityscape far below was sliding away, ever-so-slowly due to the sheer altitude they were traveling at. The wind howled inside the room, making the metal walls tremble slightly. The collapsed tower was all but invisible by now, a small patch on the venom-green blood vessel of the river, left far behind.

"Commissar Inori, the speed is down below three hundred key-pi-es. You're cleared to jump. For the victory."

"For the victory, captain," she answered. She hesitated a moment, eyeing the abyss below, then locked down her face-plate, put her arms across her chest and slowly fell through the opening in the floor, head-first.

The wind struck her brutally as soon as she cleared the opening with a force enough to tear clothing from the body, yet Inori's equipment was tight-fitting and well-secured. She caught a glimpse of the bomber, a blacker than night, elongated shape speeding away, its barely-ignited engines burning like a trio of ruby diodes. Then she assumed the proper position, belly-down, with her hands slightly outstretched and lost the sight of the plane.

For several moments the time seemed to stop, as Inori coasted weightless, free and tranquil despite the wind that violently lashed at her body. She blinked slowly and smiled a bit, which couldn't of course be seen through her seamless helmet.

It took some time for the maze of roofs and streets below to start getting visibly bigger. But when it finally happened, the process started to accelerate, more and more rapidly.

Seeing that her flight is no longer a tranquil free fall, but a terminal dive at a neck-breaking speed, she sent a mental command to her armour. She trembled slightly as the device violently tapped at her inner energy circulation and started to suck it away, transforming it into a telekinetic force. Her breastplate started to pull her back and up, squeezing her chest and taking away her breath but also steadily bleeding away all the momentum she gathered.

Approaching one of the rare flat roofs she had chosen as her landing, she was already slowly hovering in an upright position. She touched the surface with her boots with not so much as a sound, elegantly and effortlessly. Checking her gear, she looked around, her surroundings displayed in soothing sepias inside the helmet. Everything was motionless and lifeless, no spike of spiritual energy on her scanner that would indicate anything alive.

_Big__ town. And empty_, she thought. _It will take time to find that… agent. So much commotion because of one fucking fish. Getting to that tower alone will take several hours. It seems the best place to start the search and recruit some Santa's little helpers. They could be angry we brought their precious relay antenna down, though…_ For the first time today, Inori cracked a wide smile.

**Kagami** watched the collapsed form of the "temple", still towering above them, despite being already several hundred meters away. It was still impressive, even though it had lost four of its towers and the most of the right-side elevation.

"It'll take many years to rebuild," said the Thonugh who was driving the flatbed metal boat by rotating a large wheel that was geared to a propeller. The lavender-haired girl was still uneasy about him. He seemed sincere and wasn't one of the Thonughi she met, true, the gray-skinned, stocky creatures were rather difficult to tell apart. _And why do they have such a disregard for clothing? He could at least try to… cover himself, or something_, she thought_._

"They will have to do it without me," the short demon continued. "I don't fancy facing the people who did this… Or all the demons that were set free by the explosion after the centuries of imprisonment… Or those crazy Fiends who are responsible for this mess. Enough is enough, I have to find myself a more sensible master."

Kagami was too tired to comment that he needed no master. Instead, she looked at the much greater enigma, floating innocently inside a hovering, seamless glass ball, with no visible openings. _This can't be true. He's just a fucking fish. And he's been dead for years._ Yet he could talk, to fly around and obviously possessed powers which have allowed him to drag the Fury and her above the whole palace and soften the force with which they hit the surface of the river. At least partially. It was still painful. But a fall from this height should have been bone-shatteringly fatal… Not just inconvenient. She had to ask him some really serious questions… but she felt too tired and bruised to come up with any.

A shadow fell on her face. Looking up, she saw the figure of the Hermit, who just walked between her and the glowing orb, held by Ai. The duo somehow had joined the Thonugh… and the insane swordsman with the horned helmet, who thankfully had been silent and rather contemplative so far.

"Are you hurting?" asked the Hermit, crouching beside Kagami. He sounded sincerely concerned. "Do you want my jacket?"

"N- no," she answered, pressing her arms closer to her completely soaked-through shirt. Soaked and riddled with holes, to be precise. "Thank you," she added in a small voice.

There was of course one more passenger, who caused Kagami to feel even more confused. The demon whose face was covered with a hockey mask. She could no longer be called a "rollergirl", since the fireball destroyed her roller blades. And the rest of her clothing as well, literally everything beside her metal mask. Which made the whole situation awkward, to say the least, especially since her body fully regenerated the horrible burns… blonde hair including. And not only on her head.

_More importantly, what __does this creature want? What is she thinking? She was trying to kill me at first… But I know now that she was simply hungry back then… And that Thonugh said she is as sentient as I am, strange as it might seem, since she seems to be only able to communicate with purrs and growls. And… she risked her life to fetch my bra from up there, _Kagami thought, squeezing the red piece of lingerie she kept hidden in her hand. _So stupid of her!_

"Mr. Hermit, please give that jacket to her instead," she said. The naked demon-girl barked threateningly when the guy approached her. "It's all right, Furi-chan. Put it on, please."

The girl growled again, but obeyed. Upon pulling the piece of clothing on, she immediately moved away from the Hermit. Of course, she was unable to button it up with her claws, which made the point of the whole exercise dubious. Kagami sighed. _I will do it for her… But not now, I'm just… too tired. Heh, so many times I had to button up Tsukasa's shirts… and she had no claws for an excuse. Will I ever… See her again? Of course not, am I an idiot? It's impossibly unlikely._

Kagami's eyelids started to feel extremely heavy. Somehow, she felt much safer than ever before in this world, though the reasoning why it was so escaped her. The boat slowly sailed down the river, a single point of warm light in the valley of eternal night, with every passing hour farther and farther away from the ruined tower.


	11. At the Edge of the World

Sorry for the delay. I was busy and this is unlikely to change soon. The last chapter got the most reviews so far, thank you so much! Thanks are also due to my beta, Solar Scorch. Warning: don't read if you don't like lemons. Who am I fooling...

* * *

Those days drifted by really quietly and slowly for Tsukasa. She would spend most of a day napping or sunbathing. She would stop her ship from time to time to go swimming, catch some fish or just have fun in the water. She would then prepare food in the ship's great kitchen, sadly devoid of anything she could use to enrich the flavour of the fish, other than balsamic vinegar or other secretions Mr. Kame was sometimes willing to produce. She would spend hours talking to him, ever recalling more events from her long mundane life, or simply dance in the rays of the rising sun.

She wasn't worried anymore. She knew the ship was on the proper course. Not that she fully understood the functions of navigational devices. Firstly, they seemed to be of little help here, as there was no map. Secondly… she simply knew, and that was enough. Each day brought her closer to Kagami. She was pretty much sure that someday this lazy voyage would end and there will be challenges to overcome. It didn't bother her too much, as she couldn't do anything about it. What counted now was the present, the voyage across tropical seas and between exotic islands she had always dreamed of, but ran out of her days before actually managing to do it.

Tsukasa emerged from under the surface of the sea, splashing the water violently. A large, silvery fish fluttered, trying to free itself from her teeth. With the practice the girl lately gained, its chances were slim.

The sun was already low, setting an immense shadow of the immobile ship upon the sea surface and over Tsukasa. She caught a long rope that was hanging from the side of the vessel and started to climb it without any apparent difficulty, pulling herself up with her hands and walking up the hull with her feet. Her pet starfish was still clinging to her breast, and her hair were still tied with a yellow strand, as usual.

Panting slightly, Tsukasa climbed over the railing, her gills already gone, the act of summoning and dismissing them already easy and natural to the girl. She stretched and smiled, never tiring of the simple pleasures of swimming, hunting and feeling the sunlight upon her exposed skin. _I wouldn't complain if this went on forever… probably_, she thought.

When the short-haired girl returned to the deck, the sun was already setting and all that remained of the unfortunate fish were some bones, sinking into the ocean far behind the ship that was moving towards its uncertain destination once again. The surface of the ocean was perfectly clear this time, as was the sky. Only directly before the ship a tight cluster of white clouds seemed to slowly build-up in the distance.

Tsukasa yawned and sprawled herself on a deck-chair to digest the food and lazily muse about various things, as she usually did before falling asleep and waking up for a midnight walk or stargazing through one of the ship's scopes. _Sometimes I really feel like I can live like this forever… Forever… what does it really mean?_

"There's no forever, Mr. Kame," she said, prodded by a sudden clear thought. "I lived for more than a hundred years, and where are they now? I can't see them here, whether you remember a century or just a year, it just weighs the same. There's only this moment I can enjoy, or not. It's harder to enjoy it if I long for the better times I remember from the past, or imagine in the future… But they're just that, imagination. If I imagine every day in the next hundred years being like this, it's easy to be scared. But they're not the reality yet, it is my imagination I'm scared of. Imagination that exists now, not in the future, as there's no future yet… If I think about Kagami, the fear of being immortal and bored ceases to exist, I feel hope and longing instead… It's all about how you feel right now, Mr. Kame. However you choose to live this very moment. Whatever you fear… death or never-ending life, they do not exist now, they're just that… fears. How can immortality be worse, if it just means there will always be 'now'? If I am really immortal now, it just guarantees I find Kagami, sooner or later. And lose her again… And find her again… Why not…"

_I'll start to imagine my sis now,_ Tsukasa decided. She closed her eyes and summoned the freshest memory of her sister she had: Kagami sleeping peacefully on a stone floor, somewhere in the city of moonlight. More athletic than she'd ever been in her former life, yet with her cute hair and clothing exactly like they have been in high school. And with a naughty underwear she would have never dared to wear. Tsukasa found this kind of combination really appealing. She had always liked strong women, even long before she realised she was bisexual. Now Kagami was not only strong in her determination, but in her body as well. Seeing her in this cute, even kinky outfit was bordering on sacrilege… Tsukasa almost giggled at this thought_. Poor, innocent sis._

Tsukasa didn't notice when she had fallen asleep, but Kagami's picture remained rooted deeply into her mind, getting even more real as she started dreaming. Tsukasa now actually was there, sitting beside her sleeping sis, enjoying her company… in more than one way.

_There you are, big and strong, like I imagined you when I was a kid.__ Though you never were quite strong, were you? You were so afraid of everything. I've looked at you, twenty-six and still hopelessly lost. Smoking cigarettes, shouting people around at work, hopelessly alone. I guess I was the only person who you weren't afraid of by then. Oh… and that horrible thing that happened. You left me and others alone for seventy long years. But that's okay now. A new arc… What were you doing? Did you exist at all during that time? Sleeping? Maybe we were given seventy new years to catch up. I really have so many things to say to you, Kagami. So much happened. So many people you had no chance of knowing, how old was Mio then, five? Oh-ho, explaining your death to her taught me a lot. Well, turned out to be quite silly. I am surprised how easily did I adjust to being young and careless again. You didn't have to. You never fully matured, had no chance to get old… I bet you worry too much right now to look at the bright side of this. You're a fighter, you fight… _

_Alas! How I could have let you to lie on the floor? So silly of me. _Tsukasa's arms gently lifted Kagami off the floor and carried the sleeping girl onto a bed that somehow had materialized nearby. _I like fighters. I like to take care of them, when they are hurt and defenceless…_ _Let me take care of you._ She smiled, knelt beside the bed and pulled Kagami's shirt over her head. She started to slowly and meticulously fold it into a square, watching her sleeping sister. Kagami's hands lied sprawled above her head, emphasizing her scantily-covered cleavage. Tsukasa almost chuckled. _So, our breasts also were 'improved'. I wonder if you like it. Or do you consider it a curse?_

There was something about her sleeping sister that made Tsukasa stop. She realized that she wanted to touch those breasts. It's not like Kagami's body was arousing to her, or held any secrets, since they bathed together regularly. But _this_ Kagami's body… was different. It was interesting. New. Unique. How would those breasts feel to a hand? How would the fabric that covered them? And she was so… motionless. So beautifully motionless. Besides, nobody will ever know about it. She was kind of entitled to do it, too. Wasn't her body basically the same, if you disregard that little bit of extra muscle?

Tsukasa placed the shirt on a nearby chair, then slowly extended her hands and simply closed them on Kagami's breasts. They were real, no doubt about that. The girl felt them, groped, explored both the smooth skin and the exquisite fabric. She only felt a bit of shame when her sister's nipples started to harden upon repeated pinches. _First class, both them and the underwear… Oh my, what I wouldn't have done when I was young to have something like that to show off to Minoru and the others. Yeah, I was okay, but compared to that…_

She slid her hands down Kagami's sides and upturned her high-school skirt, to see both parts of the underwear clearly. It was red, laced and skimpy. _I didn't realized they were that cool. Who would you seduce with those, onee-chan? I'd really like to see that._ She traced a finger along the edge of the panties.

_I have to try th__ese on_, she decided. She stuck her fingers under the g-strings and pulled the panties off Kagami's hips. Then she stood up and looked herself over in a large mirror, pressing the red underwear against her mound. _Minoru would be driven out of his mind if he could see me now. Or you, for that matter…_ It wasn't that Tsukasa was really interested in her sister's private parts, but her onee-chan looked so erotic now, she simply had to check. She slid her hand in between the other girl's thighs. Sure enough, she felt the moisture. And as she raised it to her face, it smelt and tasted to her tongue exactly like her own. Grinning widely, the short-haired Hiiragi once again pressed the finger against onee-chan's lower lips and watched her face assume an expression that probably no-one has seen on it before. After a few rubs, Kagami parted her lips and a moan escaped from between them.

Tsukasa imagined a male member pushing those lips apart and entering her sister's mouth. For the first time, she felt an actual arousal, remembering doing such thing herself, so many times. She left both the panties and Kagami's womanhood and moved close to her face instead. _I wonder if you'd like that. You'd probably tell it's gross and humiliating to a woman! But only before you have tried that. One's perception changes, Sis. You'd say that there is nothing pleasurable in having a cock in your mouth. Somehow it's true, but how arousing it is! The man thinks he has the power over you, but it is his most delicate part inside your least one. The teeth that grind meat into paste, the tongue that helps you to devour things, the gullet that takes food down to be digested. It is so brutal, and sweet at the same time. He controls you, but he also completely trusts you with his manhood. I would like to do it even now. Oh, how beautiful you would look, _she thought, caressing the sleeping face, _how truly beautiful. It's a shame you had no chance to experience it! To die a virgin like that! But I… I can… Can I?_

Something stirred deeply inside the short-haired girl's body. Once again, her inner passion overtook her. Her body simply wanted to fulfil her heart's desire… and she began to change. As it was only a dream, it went quickly and easily.

A look into the mirror revealed a figure that was an awful lot like Tsukasa… But it wasn't her. It had the same haircut and eyes, yet its face, while looking very smooth and feminine, wasn't a female face at all. The same could be said about the rest of its body… Shoulders widened and muscles were a bit more prominent. With breasts gone and replaced by a convex chest, it was no longer a body of a fit girl, but a living image of Michelangelo's David. A bit more boyish in places, but certainly much more manly in the one aspect the original was lacking.

Tsukasa-boy smiled, blushing slightly. He looked himself over for a moment with appreciation and curiosity, but didn't dwell on that for too long. The sleeping girl was waiting for him… For someone who would show her wonderful things she didn't dare to pursue herself.

He put one of his knees on the bed and place a hand on the side of her head. He traced his thumb across her sleeping face. Her closed eyes, her fragile nose, her half-opened mouth… His thumb slid within and gently pried it wide-open. Then he grasped his hardened manhood with the other hand, pulling back the foreskin and touched pinkish lips with his equally pinkish end. The sight of a cock rubbing those tsundere's lips was so impossible that the boy cracked a wide smile.

Yet, a sight or no, he wasn't here for sightseeing. He grabbed the lavender-haired head with both hands and slowly impaled it on his swollen member. With gentle but quick movements he adjusted girl's mouth. However impossible that was, she was still asleep.

"Like that… You have to work your lips," he said, starting to slowly rock his hips back and forth. "Come on… suck a little… It's really easy… Yeah, like that, exactly like that…"

He closed his eyes, as under his magic touch, that probably wouldn't work outside of a dream, the sleeping girl finally started to suck properly. He moved in an even, not a very fast rhythm, savouring the inner details of girl's mouth as well as sensations originating in himself. Sensations which he had no experience in controlling. He suddenly opened eyes and barely had time to hastily take his penis out, before a white stream shot out of it and splashed across Kagami's face and lavender ponytails. The boy moaned, as the subsequent throes covered her with even more semen while he stroked his member.

"Ohhh… That was new," he said, then blinked and smiled, smearing the white substance all over the girl's face. "Hey. You're so beautiful."

He'd never seen a girl's face in such circumstances and wondered if he should lick it. However, licking onee-chan's face seemed somehow awkward, in part because he didn't want to destroy this picture. So he straddled her legs instead and pushed his tongue inside her navel, licking the smooth, firm abdomen that heaved slightly with her every breath. To get a better access, he quickly removed her skirt. The smell of semen and womanhood ignited his nostrils. He never took his right hand off his penis and now felt it slowly getting hard again. Almost involuntarily, he started to stroke it.

Kagami face was covered in semen, but it wasn't enough, the picture wasn't perfect without her features distorted in pleasure. Tsukasa-boy glossed his hand over her pubic mound and into her private parts and started to work on them with skill borne out of long-time experience. He looked up, over her breasts and exposed neck. He was soon rewarded with first moans of pleasure. He didn't really want to touch her that way, but his arousal somehow made him forget that, the gentle strokes quickly turning serious. Almost out of the blue, Kagami's body tightened and sprayed his hand with her vaginal juices. Only a few seconds later he felt orgasm overwhelming him as well. He let out a quiet scream, closed his eyes and splashed onee-chan's body with his seed, from her lavender triangle of hair up to red bra-covered breasts.

As soon as the pleasure receded, the lavender-haired boy sat on his feet and started to laugh out of sheer rapture. Kagami was lying before him, covered in love juices, with her clothing mostly gone, her hands sprawled over her head and her legs thrown apart. She looked happy at least. Quiet, peaceful, pleasured… And so ready to be entered.

_No… wait. I just wanted to help her… To give her something she never knew… not to take away her virginity_. Yet, he didn't feel complete yet. This couldn't be the end, the work was not done.

"I think I've found a solution, onee-chan," he said, smiling mischievously. Kagami was rolled over on her stomach and her lower body was dragged off the bed. Tsukasa-boy meticulously positioned her ass in a way that looked good to him, then gently pushed his finger, wet with girl's juices, into her other opening. "You'll going to need a proper lubrication," he said, feeling warm shivers in his chest. He wasn't sure how this would work out, so he decided to take no chances. He worked his fingers inside her until she seemed more than adequately prepared and loosened up. He kept telling himself that Kagami's firm and well-muscled butt wasn't arousing, but even if it was true, the very thing he was doing was so erotic that his manhood was ready when he was.

Feeling even more shivers, he positioned himself behind and slightly above, touched Kagami's anus with his end and started to slowly push it in. Maybe sex was nothing especially new to him, but doing that kind of thing to this tsundere… It seemed just wrong. His head began to swim, even as his hips continued the move. He pounded her once, twice, he began to do it in a rhythm, in the same time he felt his grip on the consciousness falling more and more apart… _falling_…

"Oh my god," said Tsukasa, suddenly opening her eyes to the sight of a sky covered in stars. "What am I doing…?" She felt an attack of panic overwhelming her, a terrible guilt trying to surface through the layers of rapture. She didn't know how did it happen, but somewhere, somehow she had crossed the line. Maybe it was a just dream… but she was controlling it. Every step seemed just fine, but it ended horribly wrong. Tears of shame appeared in Tsukasa's eyes.

Yet at the same time, she was intensely aroused. Her hand was deep between her thighs and wasn't going nowhere. The girl was too aroused to stop it, regardless of how she felt. She kept touching herself and finally her angst was blown away by a wave of fire. And then Tsukasa slowly fell into the ashes, last remains of some picture now destroyed beyond any chance of repair. That was the cause of Tsukasa's tears. A sin wasn't a word that truly belonged to her dictionary. No, she was weeping only because something had been lost.

With her tears still wet, she stood up and walked to the railing, to breathe deeply, feel the wind on her body and stare into the endless darkness.

It took her maybe a minute to notice that the darkness wasn't quite absolute. There was a faint line of light on the horizon.

"Is it dawn already?" wondered Tsukasa. "No, it's on the northern horizon. Northern lights?" Tsukasa wiped remaining tears from her eyes and decided to take a look at the strange light from a vantage point, her distress all but forgotten.

When she entered the bridge, she noticed that Mr. Kame was already there, standing on his rear legs, front ones braced against the navigational console. He was watching the strange lights as well. When he saw Tsukasa, he turned his head and spat on one of the screens. It was his usual manner of drawing her attention to something.

It took Tsukasa several moments to figure out what the screen was showing.

"A sea current… In the direction of the lights… Three knots and growing steadily… What does that mean?"

The morning finally diminished the glow that in the meantime had covered half of the horizon. Tsukasa was now looking into an immeasurably massive wall of white clouds. It was rising from the sea as far as she could see and the ship was speeding towards it, despite she turned the engine off some time ago. She didn't say anything, just swallowed hard and looked at Mr. Kame. He looked back with a serious expression.

The sound appeared when the ship was already sailing through a deepening mist. The wall of clouds surrounded and swallowed it and now the milky vapour blocked the sight to an extent where the parts of the ship farthest from the bridge were barely visible. The sound started out as a distant whisper and slowly rose to a deep, menacing roar that seemed to come from every direction and was getting louder by the minute.

Tsukasa started to sweat. A thought passed through her head that she should probably panic, run away or just hide her head between her knees and wait for the worst. Yet, she only wrapped her arms around her and nervously looked at the speed meter. It was indicating they were making almost thirty knots now, much faster than what the ship was normally capable of. They were speeding into impenetrable mist and an inexplicable roar that sounded like the ocean itself was in its death throes.

It was easy to face known threats. Tsukasa always felt somehow drawn to watch scary movies, that allowed her to live out the fear in, what a psychologist once told her, was a safe, controlled fashion. Another level of fear was the fear of getting robbed, bitten by a killer Japanese hornet or facing a major earthquake. But they were all known fears. What was happening now was very different. Alien. Unknown. It was causing a kind of fear that was directly gnawing at your soul, that threatened your very sanity. Tsukasa felt it was way too serious to cry. Besides, she was too afraid of Mr. Kame to allow herself to break down in front of his stoic form. And finally…

Tsukasa had always been curious.


End file.
